Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

FELIXSTOWE DOCK AND RAILWAY BILL

Ordered,
That the Committee on the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Bill have leave to visit and inspect the site of the proposed works, provided that no evidence shall be taken in the course of such visit and that any party who has made an Appearance before the Committee be permitted to attend by his Counsel, Agent or other representative.—[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

Oral Answers to Questions — TRANSPORT

Flightpaths (Developments)

Mr. Stern: asked the Secretary of State for Transport if he has any plans to seek to extend his powers to control or influence major developments of public or private buildings under existing flightpaths.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Michael Spicer): No, Sir. The consideration of planning applications is a matter for local planning authorities, although with certain proposals for developments near to an airport or affecting aircraft using it planning authorities are bound to consult the airport authority and either the Civil Aviation Authority or the Ministry of Defence.

Mr. Stern: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Is he aware that whereas, in general, the planning authority has powers to prohibit the extension of a flight path over existing development, his powers to comment on a development or concentration of people under a flight path are rather more limited, and that that causes considerable anxiety, especially in my constituency, where the Filton airfield provides more than 10,000 jobs? In view of proposed developments in that and many other areas, will he seek to extend his powers?

Mr. Spicer: I understand my hon. Friend's anxiety over this and a number of related issues. Planning authorities must consult the CAA about safety considerations before they make their decisions. In the context that my hon. Friend mentioned, the Secretary of State for the Environment advises about noise considerations, and he has discretion to call in the applications.

Dartford Tunnel

Mr. Cartwright: asked the Secretary of State for Transport when he expects to announce a decision on future plans for the Darford tunnel complex.

The Minister of State, Department of Transport (Mr. David Mitchell): We shall issue the invitation to promoters to make proposals for a third crossing at Dartford later this week.

Mr. Cartwright: Is the Minister aware that it is now seven months since the Secretary of State first suggested the involvement of private enterprise in the building of the third Dartford tunnel, and that only now do we have some idea of the time scale involved? Does he accept that the completion of every new section of the M25 increases the risk of Dartford becoming Britain's biggest bottleneck? Why does the Department of Transport not show the same sense of urgency over the Dartford tunnel as it did over the Channel tunnel?

Mr. Mitchell: This is a new idea and it requires careful assessment before we start inviting the private sector to put proposals to us. As to the bottleneck, I understand that congestion at Dartford is not likely to become serious before 1991–92.

Mr. Higgins: Is my hon. Friend aware that congestion on the M25 has already become considerable and presents a problem? When he studies possible proposals for a new tunnel, will he consider the fact that, sooner or later, we are likely to need to make the M25 four lanes in each direction rather than three?

Mr. Mitchell: I listened carefully to what my right hon. Friend said, and we shall keep it in mind.

Mr. Tony Banks: I am interested to hear that the Minister is leaving traffic congestion problems for the next Labour Government, but in the meantime, will the third Dartford tunnel have any impact on his plans for the east London river crossing?

Mr. Mitchell: On the first point, we have no intention of waiting until the end of the century' before that is put in hand. We shall of course take his second point into account.

Mr. Squire: I endorse what the hon. Member for Woolwich (Mr. Cartwright) said about urgency. Has my hon. Friend come to any preliminary conclusions about the advantages of a private tunnel versus a possible tunnel from the joint councils?

Mr. Mitchell: When my hon. Friend sees the invitation to promoters he will find that there are opportunities for people to quote both ways, and we shall look with great interest at what is the best value for money.

Rushden and Higham Ferrers Bypass

Mr. Fry: asked the Secretary of State for Transport what is his latest estimate for the commencement date for the A6 bypass of Rushden and Higham Ferrers in Northamptonshire.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Peter Bottomley): Subject to the clearance of the statutory procedures, and provided that the resources are available, construction could begin during 1990.

Mr. Fry: Is my hon. Friend aware that a possible route for the bypass has been in existence for many years and so there is likely to be the minimum amount of opposition to it? What is required is the will and the money to build it, and in those circumstances can my hon. Friend make any improvement on the date that he has given me?

Mr. Bottomley: I shall do what I can. The scheme has always been in the reserve list at the end of the roads programme. We now have a good prospect of a start in 1990.

Mr. William Powell: May I endorse what my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Fry) said? The delay in providing the bypass is having extremely bad effects upon my constituents in the parish of Stanwick, through which traffic is being diverted simply because the existing facilities through Higham Ferrers and Rushden are so crowded. Any improvement in the date will be welcomed by my constituents.

Mr. Bottomley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. It is clear that any improvements that we can make in the roads programme will generally be welcomed by people in the locality.

Bus Lanes (London)

Mr. Dubs: asked the Secretary of State for Transport what plans he has for the operation of bus lanes on trunk roads in London following the abolition of the Greater London council.

Mr. Peter Bottomley: As with all forms of traffic management on national roads, I shall want to satisfy myself as to their effects.

Mr. Dubs: Does the Minister agree that bus lanes in London have proved an excellent way of speeding up bus services and so improving the efficiency of London transport? Will the hon. Gentleman have a look at the bus lane in Park Lane in the morning rush hour? It is being made a nonsense of because buses and vans are using it for parking. Unless parking is abolished in bus lanes, buses cannot benefit from them.

Mr. Bottomley: I shall do as the hon. Gentleman suggests.

Mr. Greenway: Do not bus lanes in London produce the most ghastly chaos and delay motorists and bus passengers getting to work? Is my hon. Friend satisfied that some of the bus lanes recently introduced by the GLC have been not for traffic reasons but for spiteful, silly reasons?

Mr. Bottomley: All hon. Members will benefit from the review of the bus lane assessment criteria and performance, being carried out for the Department and London Regional Transport.

Mr. Tony Banks: Is not whingeing by Tory Members about bus lanes most inappropriate, since bus lanes generally speed up buses and are for the advantage of bustravelling members of the public in London? Will he ensure that when the GLC is abolished and borough councils and his Department are looking at bus lanes, they will take first into consideration the convenience of the travelling public, and not that of the Right-wing fanaticism of his Back Benchers?

Mr. Bottomley: Proper expressions of concern from my hon. Friends behind me are sometimes preferable to the witterings of Labour Members.

Mr. Ward: When my hon. Friend looks at the review of bus lanes, he may consider that many of them should go the way that the GLC is rightly going, and disappear. If he gets around to looking at bus lanes in Park Lane, will he consider that that is probably the most crazy system of all, because buses occupy two lanes on one of the most highly-used roads in London?

Mr. Bottomley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. It is clear that one of the most popular things that I can do, given the expressions of interest on both sides of the House, is to visit Park Lane in the morning and see it for myself.

Oil Tankers (Sea Routes)

Mr. Kennedy: asked the Secretary of State for Transport what further consideration he has given to the designation of sea routes for large crude oil carrying tankers west of the Hebrides and clear of the Minch; and if he will make a statement.

The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Nicholas Ridley): Surveys carried out under the Government's civil hydrography programme have confirmed that there is a route of sufficient depth for deep draught vessels to the west of the outer Hebrides. The surveys were completed last autumn, and relevant charts have been updated to show the area surveyed and to make it clear that it is suitable for deep-draught vessels.

Mr. Kennedy: I thank the Secretary of State for that reply and for the written answers that I received last year from his hon. Friend the Minister of State. Will the Secretary of State clarify whether he enjoys the power to make those routes statutory, or is his power simply advisory? Concern has been expressed that the Government do not have the statutory power to enforce rerouting outwith the Minch and west of the Hebrides. There is evidence that the French Government, in the wake of the Amoco Cadiz catastrophe, were able to take such power. What is the Government's position?

Mr. Ridley: I am advised that I do not have powers to close a route to traffic, so I cannot do more than advise traffic as to the preferable route. Obviously I cannot answer for the French Government. They may have different powers. We are dealing with international traffic, so the question of powers does not seem to me to be one that we should raise at this time.

Aviation (Liberalisation)

Mr. Hind: asked the Secretary of State for Transport what recent discussions he has had with British airlines about the liberalisation of aviation.

Mr. Michael Spicer: We regularly seek the advice of British airlines in negotiating for more liberal aviation agreements. We have made notable progress in Europe, with liberal agreements with five other countries, and are pushing hard this year for real progress in the EC.

Mr. Hind: Does my hon. Friend agree that cheap air travel cannot come quickly enough? Will he take every possible step to liberalise the cost of flying in Europe?


[HON. MEMBERS: "Reading".] I am not reading. One cannot even look down these days. Does my hon. Friend agree that the sooner the EEC and our European allies come to terms with free and non-protective flights between European nations the better that it will be for the consumer, especially the British consumer?

Mr. Spicer: As a direct result of the new air service agreements that we have signed with several European countries, cheaper air fares and many more services are being introduced. I am confident that during the coming year more British airlines will fly those routes and that as a result the quality of service will rise and air fares will fall.

Mr. Evans: What is the difference between liberalisation and complete deregulation of aviation? Has the Department of Transport considered what has happened in the United States, where complete deregulation has meant several aviation companies tottering on the brink of bankruptcy? Will he confirm that he does not intend to go down that track?

Mr. Spicer: There is no proposal on the table in Europe or in the mind of the Government for complete deregulation. Obviously the Government will be involved on a bilateral or a multilateral basis. We wish to make it easier for competition to exist, in the interests of passengers.

Mr. McCrindle: From his discussions with British Airways and Al Italia, is my hon. Friend satisfied that no barriers are being placed in the way of the proposed additional service to Milan from Gatwick, in conformity with the Government's policy of dual designation by British airlines to European destinations?

Mr. Spicer: I am not satisfied that the Italian Government understand, as we understand, that the Treaty of Rome should apply to aviation matters as it applies to other matters, and that there should be far greater competition and multidesignation of airlines on that route and on other routes into Italy.

Mr. Ron Davies: Does the Minister accept that price considerations must always be secondary to safety? In the discussions that he and his Department are having, what consideration is being given to safety standards?

Mr. Spicer: Safety standards are the statutory responsibility of the Civil Aviation Authority. My Department supports the Civil Aviation Authority in precisely the way that the hon. Gentleman implies.

Mr. Soames: I congratulate my hon. Friend on the fine work done by him and his Department. Anyone working in the aviation industry is grateful for the progress that he has made, but does he agree that there is much more to be done? Will he assure the House that he will continue to press, especially within Europe, for further and dramatic liberalisation'?

Mr. Spicer: I thank my hon. Friend warmly for his kind remarks. I agree completely that there is much to be done to reduce fares and to establish the rules of competition, so that our formidable airline industry can succeed in Europe, as it is succeeding in other parts of the world, to the benefit of passengers throughout Europe.

Mr. Robert Hughes: Is it not the case that in 1984 the Secretary of State rejected the Civil Aviation Authority's

competition policy because he wanted to protect the value of British Airways for privatisation? Is this sudden new-found enthusiasm for competition today a recognition that the value of BA has fallen by half and that the Government cannot sell it with a proper competition policy?

Mr. Spicer: I hope that that question means that the Opposition, led by the hon. Gentleman, will nov, fight for more competition. If that is true, it is to be welcomed. The arrangements that my right hon. Friend made last year, whereby British Caledonian could take over some substantial routes into Saudi Arabia in exchange for some not-so-substantial routes to South America, were a move towards further competition, and go against what the hon. Gentleman implied in his question.

Road Humps

Mr. Gerald Bowden: asked the Secretary of State for Transport when he expects the proposed draft amendments to the Highways (Road Humps) Regulations 1983 to be put before the House.

Mr. Peter Bottomley: As soon as possible.

Mr. Bowden: Will my hon. Friend take note of the anxiety felt by many of my constituents, especially those who live in Court lane, Dulwich where the delay in implementing the regulations has meant that many serious accidents have taken place and that the residents are in fear of life and limb because of the speed of traffic on that road? I am delighted that the regulations will be implemented as soon as possible.

Mr. Bottomley: I have seen the correspondence that my hon. Friend had with my predecessor, and I am aware of the leading role played by Mr. Sholem. Road humps are not the only way to reduce vehicle speeds. It is well worth while for local authorities to look at other ways of reducing the danger that clearly exists.

Mr. Simon Hughes: Given that consultation was originally due to take place last autumn with the amended regulations being laid before the House in the early part of 1986, will the Minister give an assurance that consultation will start within a matter of days, and that the regulations will be laid before the end of the spring? It is not only in Southwark, which the hon. Member for Dulwich (Mr. Bowden) and I represent, that the amendment of these regulations will be greatly beneficial. I am sure that the Minister will support them. Will he ensure that his Department moves quickly?

Mr. Bottomley: The hon. Gentleman gets it slightly wrong, because when we are dealing with complex and controversial subjects it may be better to take weeks rather than days. If I can begin consultation by Easter, it will be possible to lay the regulations before the House by the summer.

Mr. Gregory: Will my hon. Friend pursue the possibility of issuing a circular to local authorities to encourage the greater use of speed humps, which in medieval cities such as York would certainly stop heavy vehicles from making short cuts through residential areas and avoiding the proper routes?

Mr. Bottomley: I shall give the consideration that my hon. Friend requests, but humps are not the only way and are not always the most satisfactory way of reducing excessive speed.

Channel Tunnel

Mr. Boyes: asked the Secretary of State for Transport if he has yet made any estimate of the number of jobs that will be created in the north-east as a result of building the Channel fixed link; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. David Mitchell: We have made no such estimate. CTG-FM intends to invite bids for the supply of equipment from companies throughout the United Kingdom. It has indentified approximatedly 3,500 man-years of work for which companies in the north-east, Yorkshire and Humberside are well placed to compete successfully. In addition, British Rail's investment of up to £390 million is likely to benefit companies in the north and midlands.

Mr. Boyes: On 20 January the Secretary of State said that he would
consider carefully the employment consequences of the development."—[Official Report, 20 January 1986; Vol. 90, c. 20.]
Once again he is giving me no assurances for the people of the north-east that the Channel tunnel will create jobs. We know full well that it will make matters even worse for the region with the highest unemployment. It is nothing more than a massive drain on vitally needed cash that should be invested in the nort-east to create jobs for the people there so that the economy there can begin to thrive again—something that it will never do while this Government are in power.

Mr. Mitchell: First, there will not be a drain on jobs anywhere in the country. Much of the money is coming from abroad and would not be invested here if it were not for the project, which is in the private sector. Secondly, jobs will be awarded not on a Buggins' turn basis, but substantially to those who win them because they are competitive. That includes a large number of firms north of Watford.

Mr. Gale: My hon. Friend will be aware that north-east Kent has higher unemployment levels than those in some parts of the north-east of England. Following his reply in the debate on the White Paper, is my hon. Friend able to comment further on whether his Department has plans to publish a prospectus for north-east and east Kent, along the lines of that published by the French Government on behalf of the north Pas de Calais?

Mr. Mitchell: I am conscious of the number of unemployed in east Kent. The committee that I shall chair will consider that aspect to see how best to ensure that the development provides them with jobs.

Mr. Leadbitter: Is the Minister prepared to initiate discussions with the regional CBI, the trade unions, the major industrialists and the ports in connection with the effect on the region's economy of the building of the link? If he is not prepared to take the initiative, will he respond favourably to an invitation from these bodies to discuss the important matter of the economy of the region?

Mr. Mitchell: I am always prepared to respond to an invitation to discuss the matter. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will bring a deputation to see me.

Mr. Holt: Is my hon. Friend aware that I have had communications from the business community in Cleveland, including one from the Tees and Hartlepool port authority, welcoming the Government's decision to

go ahead with the Channel tunnel and recognising that, with its good labour force, the opportunities in the north-east will be taken up, which will expand the economy in that area?

Mr. Mitchell: I am sure that my hon. Friend reflects the spirit of those in the north-east who are determined to be successful and secure jobs and orders.

Mr. Robert Hughes: Will the hon. Gentleman consider the experience of the development of North sea oil, and recollect that in the early stages most orders went abroad and that only after the establishment of the Offshore Supplies Office, chaired by a Minister at the Department of Energy did 71 per cent. of contracts over £100,000 come to Britain? Will he immediately set up such an office to make sure that we get the maximum benefit from the British end of the construction costs?

Mr. Mitchell: No. I am confident the British industry is well-equipped to keep a substantial share of the business that is available and, without any duck shoving, it is much more competitive that the hon. Gentleman imagines.

Safety Cones

Mr. Dykes: asked the Secretary of State for Transport what assessment he has made of the implications for traffic flows on motorways and major trunk roads undergoing repairs and maintenance of the numbers and location of safety cones, especially at weekends; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Ridley: Traffic management arrangements at roadworks sites are designed to allow vehicles to pass safely through the works with as little delay as possible. We monitor the arrangements and revise our standard layouts when improvements are identified.

Mr. Dykes: As there is nothing more infuriating for hard-pressed motorists—who see too much congestion nowadays anyway, including on motorways—will my right hon. Friend reassure the House and the public, after all the discussion in the House last summer, that the excessive deployment of cones in lanes that are not being worked on, particularly at weekends, is now a thing of the past? There is still much mail about this subject, and people are fed up with it.

Mr. Ridley: There are reasons why sometimes there are some cones with no visible work. Concrete may be setting, it may be too cold for asphalt laying, the cones may have been set up for work to start shortly, or work may be taking place underneath the structures. Equally, on many occasions cones are there for no good purpose. I wish that agent authorities would apply the same spirit of urgency to moving cones as I do to getting the contracts done by applying the lane rental system, which has saved up to 25 per cent. of the time of the works.

Mr. Snape: Are we not the only developed country that is happy to have miles of cones for yards of work—particularly at weekends as the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) said—or for no work? Will the Secretary of State look at other parts of the world—he can have a long trip if he likes—to see how they do it? Does this happen because much of the coning is carried out by a private company, which perhaps can charge so much per cone and use as many as possible?

Mr. Ridley: No, Sir. Coning is carried out by agent authorities, which are usually the county councils. I have already reminded them, and I shall do so again, that they should not leave cones in place for a minute longer than is necessary. Our system of lane rental, whereby a contractor is paid a bonus if he finishes the contract early, has reduced the time by 25 per cent. in many cases. It is the envy of the world. I am afraid that I shall not have time to go round the world, because so many foreigners are coming here to see what we are doing.

Mr. Higgins: Given the success of that incentive scheme, will my right hon. Friend consider imposing penalties on agencies that leave the cones in place unnecessarily?

Mr. Ridley: I have looked at that very point, but it is very difficult to think of a legal way of imposing a penalty on one's agent.

Stansted Airport

Mr. Haselhurst: asked the Secretary of State for Transport what discussions he has held with the British Airports Authority about disposal of land in the safeguard area around Stansted airport.

Mr. Spicer: I expect to be able to announce within the next week or so the details of the new area of safeguarded land at Stansted. The British Airports Authority will then dispose of land outside that area.

Mr. Haselhurst: Will my hon. Friend confirm that the purpose of safeguarding, in the first place, an area of land amounting to 2,500 acres was against the possibility of a second runway? As my right hon. Friend has said emphatically that there will not be a second runway at Stansted, what is the difficulty about determining the exact amount of land of which to dispose?

Mr. Spicer: I can confirm that the reason for the disposal of this land is that there will not be a second runway. I understand that certain legal difficulties have led to the delay, but they have been overcome and I expect shortly to be able to make the announcement for which my hon. Friend is looking.

Mr. Bowen Wells: Will my hon. Friend describe the difference between the new area of which he is prepared to dispose and the area which was previously designated under inquiry by the Eyre report?

Mr. Spicer: As my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst) said, that land is no longer needed for a second runway. There is nothing new about this. It was proposed in the White Paper.

Coaches (Tachographs)

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: asked the Secretary of State for Transport if he will introduce measures to enable tachographs fitted to coaches to be used for on-the-spot speed checks.

Mr. Peter Bottomley: It is for chief officers of police to decide what evidence is needed to support prosecutions for speeding. The proposed requirement to fit coaches with speed governors will greatly help compliance with speed limits.

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Is my hon. Friend aware that tachographs are used on the continent to enforce speed

restrictions and that it is a cheap and effective system? Does he agree that such a system is preferable to his proposal, which will force small bus operators to fit these new-fangled speed governors—a burden which they could well do without?

Mr. Bottomley: My hon. Friend will be aware that the laws in this country are different from the laws in the rest of Europe. It is for the police to decide what evidence to bring and what resources should be deployed. Speed governors tackle the problem more directly and are a more certain way of ensuring compliance. Prevention is better than cure.

Mr. Stephen Ross: The Minister has mentioned twice the fitting of speed governors, which already exist on coaches on the Oxford Link service. What time scale does he envisage before this becomes a legal requirement?

Mr. Bottomley: I am not yet certain.

Mr. Lyell: Will my hon. Friend think again about the use of tachographs? They are extremely effective in preventing accidents. I have seen them in operation when travelling on coaches throughout Europe. They have much to recommend them.

Mr. Bottomley: I shall give further consideration to my hon. and learned Friend's suggestion.

Mr. Evans: In view of the widespread concern in the country about the speed at which certain coaches travel on motorways—all hon. Members have seen coaches flying past them at 70, 80 or 90 mph—why does the Minister not instruct the police regularly to inspect the tachographs? The introduction of the governor will cause problems for some vehicles that are forced to speed to escape from a possible traffic hazard.

Mr. Bottomley: The hon. Gentleman will want to know that the Department has analysed about 80,000 tachograph charts in the last 12 months.

Road Accidents

Mr. Dormand: asked the Secretary of State for Transport whether he will state the number of people killed on the roads in the years 1982, 1983, 1984 and 1985, respectively; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Bottomley: The number of people killed in road accidents in Great Britain between 1982 and 1984 is as follows: In 1982 5,934; in 1983 5,445; in 1984 5,599. Final statistics for 1985 are not yet available.
In the first nine months of 1985 road accident deaths were 10 per cent. lower than in the first nine months of 1984. If this trend is continued through the fourth quarter of 1985 the number of road accident deaths in 1985 will be the lowest recorded since 1954.

Mr. Dormand: If that number of people were killed in aircraft crashes each year, would not the Government take more effective action to reduce the slaughter? Will the Minister consider introducing legislation to provide for an automatic prison sentence for those convicted of drunken driving?

Mr. Bottomley: The hon. Gentleman expresses the widespread concern about the appalling slaughter on our roads. It is worth giving a pat on the back to those who have contributed to reductions in the numbers of accidents,


especially because of the increase in the use of our roads. We must think of all possible ways of getting through to drivers, especially at local level, the initiatives that can be taken to maintain the downward trend.

Mr. Chapman: Does my hon. Friend's Department keep a record, not only of the number of vehicles using our roads, but of the frequency with which they use our roads? Would it not be a good idea to measure that against the number of road accidents to discover the efficiency of road safety measures and to assess the need for new roads and bypasses, which might bring down the figure further?

Mr. Bottomley: Yes. Road design might make a significant reduction in the consequences of driver behaviour, but driver behaviour itself makes the greatest contribution to accidents, serious injuries and deaths on the road. We must put out that message, especially at local level, because that is where people misbehave.

Mr. Snape: May we have the equivalent figures for railway passengers killed in the past four years? Does the Minister agree that it would make more sense, and be safer, if the Government encouraged the greater use of public transport, especially railways?

Mr. Bottomley: The figures are available. If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that everyone should move from the roads to the railways, he will find that the democracy of transport moves in a way different from that which he expects.

M25 (Lighting)

Mr. Peter Bruinvels: asked the Secretary of State for Transport whether he has received any representations in favour of lighting all remaining sections of the M25; and what offers he has received from lighting companies about lighting the motorway.

Mr. Peter Bottomley: We have received a number of representations, including a press release with a covering letter from a lighting manufacturer.

Mr. Bruinvels: Is my hon. Friend aware that 26 people have lost their lives on the M25 since it was opened? Is he further aware that a number of companies such as Philips are showing interest in taking over lighting on the M25, because only 40 miles are lit and 80 miles are unlit? Will the Minister consider proposals by any lighting company making a bid to undertake the complete lighting on the M25, because lighting saves lives? Is my hon. Friend aware that non-lighting fatalities cost £206,000 per person?

Mr. Bottomley: My hon. Friend will be happy to know that I am shortly to meet representatives of the company which he named. As a Right-winger like myself, in terms of value for public money, my hon. Friend will know that even the most inspired reaction to European Road Safety Year and Energy Efficiency Year should not preclude any lighting proposals going out to competitive tender.

British Rail (Capital Equipment)

Mr. Campbell-Savours: asked the Secretary of State for Transport when he next intends to meet the chairman of British Rail to discuss the procurement of capital equipment.

Mr. David Mitchell: The policy of the British Railways board, agreed by Ministers, is for competitive procurement. The implementation of this is a matter for the board.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Would the Minister wish to see the retention of railbus production at Workington in the event that the Laird Group succeeds in taking over Leyland Bus? Would he say that the Government and the British Railways Board are more than satisfied with the railbus while it is being produced at Workington?

Mr. Mitchell: I understand that British Rail was satisfied with the production at Workington. As to the competitive sourcing of DMUs, there will still be at least three potential suppliers for railbus and two for Sprinters. That is important to British Rail.

Mr. Roger King: Can my hon. Friend confirm that this Government's investment in British Rail is running at an all-time high?

Mr. Mitchell: I can confirm that British Rail's proposals for investment have been fully met whenever they have come forward and that they have been quickly turned round.

Mr. Roy Hughes: Is the Minister aware that there is widespread anxiety in south Wales about British Rail's announcement during the weekend of major cuts in the south Wales rail network, including the loss of 424 jobs at the Severn tunnel junction, which will decimate railway villages such as Rogiet, Magor and Undy? When the Minister next meets the chairman of BR, will he ask him to reconsider? Will the Minister notify the Secretary of State that there will be some concern about the fact that he has chosen not to make a statement to the House today about this extremely important matter?

Mr. Mitchell: The issues that the hon. Gentleman has raised are for the management of British Rail, but I shall look into the matter and write to him in response to his question.

Oral Answers to Questions — ATTORNEY-GENERAL

Law Officers (Advice)

Mr. Campbell-Savours: asked the Attorney-General what steps he has taken to ensure that, in future, advice from the Law Officers remains confidential.

The Attorney-General (Sir Michael Havers): As I informed the right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon (Mr. Morris) in a written answer on 13 January, I am satisfied that the arrangements in my Department are adequate and that other Departments are aware of their duty to maintain the confidentiality of any advice which the Law Officers may give them.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Is it not fair to say that, in standing before the House and answering the questions of my right hon. and hon. Friends about confidentiality, the Attorney-General is showing that he is accountable to the House of Commons? Why should that accountability not extend to addressing members of the Select Committee, which is examining these matters? Should they not be treated in the same way? What is the distinction?

Sir Michael Havers: It is a well-accepted convention because the usual work of the Law Officers is to give advice, and that advice would not be required by a Select Committee.

Mr. Stokes: Will my right hon. and learned Friend remember that the question is, I think, asked not out of devotion to the British constitution but to stir up trouble, and that these things are far better left to the old conventions on which we have managed our affairs for many centuries?

Sir Michael Havers: I agree with my hon. Friend. As I have said before, the House should think very carefully before it tries to alter that convention.

Mr. John Morris: Was anybody in the Attorney-General's Department consulted about the possibility of the letter to be written by the Solicitor-General being put into the public domain? When the leak inquiry was set up, did the right hon. and learned Gentleman have reason to believe that it might have been an official leak?

Sir Michael Havers: The answer to the first part of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's questions is no. As for the second, there was no communication at all save for my communication with the secretary to the Cabinet.

Westland plc

Mr. Winnick: asked the Attorney-General if he considered granting immunity from prosecution to any other civil servant involved in the disclosure of the Solicitor-General's letter to the then Secretary of State for Defence.

The Attorney-General: No, Sir.

Mr. Winnick: What remains puzzling is why the director of information at the Department of Trade and Industry was apparently given immunity from prosecution but that the same was true for no other civil servant, including Mr. Powell at No. 10, who certainly had a hand in the leaking of the letter from the Solicitor-General to the then Defence Secretary. Why was the decision to write the letter taken? Does the Attorney-General agree, on reflection, that the Solicitor-General was used by the Prime Minister, and that she prompted him to write the letter to the then Defence Secretary?

Sir Michael Havers: The answer to the first question is that nobody even suggested, let alone asked me to grant immunity to anyone else, so that matter did not arise. As for the hon. Gentleman's second question, I repeat yet again that there was no question of my hon. and learned Friend being used. He carried out his duty in the normal way.

Law Centres (Funding)

Mr. Gerald Bowden: asked the Attorney-General if he will make it his policy to take over the funding of law centres currently funded under the urban aid programme when the funding under that programme expires.

The Solicitor-General (Sir Patrick Mayhew): No, Sir. The reallocation of ministerial duties is not a matter for individual Ministers.

Mr. Bowden: Will my hon. and learned Friend acknowledge the good work that is done by many law

centres, especially by the Southwark law project? After the ending of urban aid for that project it is likely to be funded by Southwark council, which is a recipient of many of the complaints and cases that the centre receives and conducts on behalf of clients. Therefore, there is likely to be a conflict and unsatisfactory funding.

The Solicitor-General: I am sure that my hon. Friend is right in saying that the Southwark law project does extremely good work. That being so, I hope that the local authority will not stint support for it. It would be wrong for any local authority, in determining its funding responsibilities, to take account of the fact that a law centre encourages individuals to draw attention to any impropriety of such an authority.

Mr. Eastham: May I underline the valuable work that law centres undertake, especially on behalf of the disadvantaged and the poor in inner city areas? Is it not about time that a thorough appraisal was undertaken with a view to the Government coming to some decisions that will mean that local authorities do not have to find money to fund law centres through urban aid, bearing in mind all the restrictions that Government Departments place upon them?

The Solicitor-General: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is right in saying that many law advisory centres undertake extremely good work. However, they are local voluntary organisations and do not form part of the statutory legal services framework. As such, their funding falls for local decision, especially local authority decision.

Mr. Simon Hughes: Does the Solicitor-General not recognise that the recommendation of the Lord Chancellor's advisory committee was that money should be found for the continuance of law centres, and that the complacent answer given by his noble Friend in another place last Monday suggested that the Government have no intention of doing anything to help any of the law centres throughout the land? Is he aware that that is unacceptable to those in the legal profession, both the Bar and solicitors, and to the majority of clients who depend upon law centres and Government funding for them for any hope of obtaining decent legal representation in cases which are often important?

The Solicitor-General: I recognise the recommendation to which the hon. Gentleman referred, but I do not recognise the conclusion that he seeks to draw from it. Law centres are part of the local framework by which the statutory legal services are supplemented. Therefore, their funding must be subject to local decision. I believe that that is the right way of proceeding. It is for local authorities to determine their priorities, not for central Government to impose priorities upon them.

Legal Aid

Mr. Dubs: asked the Attorney-General whether it will be open to the legal aid review committee to propose savings in expenditure; and whether he has any particular areas in mind.

The Solicitor-General: Yes, Sir, and it will be for the committee itself to select the areas of review.

Mr. Dubs: Is the Solicitor-General aware that there is widespread concern at the apparent intention of the


Government to cut eligibility for legal aid for the first time since the scheme was introduced? Does he realise that the Law Society and many other bodies have expressed their dismay at the proposal, which is likely to lead to a cut in the right to legal representation for poor people, especially those with families? Can that really be the Government's intention?

The Solicitor-General: I think that the hon. Gentleman is referring to the announcement that was made about dependants last week. The Government keep the working of the legal aid scheme under review at all times, and not only when special review teams are established. There are no plans for further changes in eligibility at present. The reduction in dependants' allowances will in a small way moderate the rate of growth of legal aid expenditure. It still remains true that expenditure in the next financial year on legal aid will exceed that for the present year by far more than can be accounted for by inflation

Mr. Ashby: Has my hon. and learned Friend read the Coopers and Lybrand report on the remuneration of the Bar? Is he aware of the widespread unrest at the Bar? Does he understand that the Bar is most unhappy at the refusal even to negotiate with it and with the attempt to impose a 5 per cent. increase in fees? Does my hon. and learned Friend want to be responsible for the destruction of the Bar?

The Solicitor-General: Tempting though it is, it is not for me to comment upon a matter that is now before the courts.

Solicitors (Rights of Audience)

Mr. Abse: asked the Attorney-General what conclusions have been reached by the Lord Chancellor's Department on the rights of audience of solicitors in the higher courts in the course of its consideration of the desirability of changes in the general practice of the courts.

The Attorney-General: It is the view of the Government that solicitors should be able to deal with certain formal or unopposed matters in any court. We have recently sought the views of both branches of the legal profession and the National Consumer Council on how this might best be achieved.

Mr. Abse: The collegiate of judges met on 13 January, no practice direction has emerged from the collegiate, and we have no definitive statement from the Lord Chancellor's Department. Does the Attorney-General not realise that there is widespread disquiet, however ill-founded it may be, about the belief that backstairs pressures are at work? Will the Attorney-General try to get an early announcement about the matter from the Lord Chancellor's Department, or will he prompt the judges to give the required practice direction?

The Attorney-General: A matter as important as this is a matter for consultation, as the hon. Gentleman will appreciate. In the end it comes down to looking at the public interest. That must be the key to this problem.

Oral Answers to Questions — OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT

Rapid Disbursement Funds

Mr. Bowen Wells: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what money from the Overseas Development Administration budget has become available, either from slippage or because emergency funds have not been taken up, for rapid disbursement during February and March; and to which investments he has allocated it.

The Minister for Overseas Development (Mr. Timothy Raison): Inevitably, some adjustments within the programme are necessary towards the end of the financial year. I have recently announced new allocations of emergency aid for the Sudan and refugee relief in African countries, involving some £5 million of expected spending in the current financial year.

Mr. Wells: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that only £5 million has been underspent in the expected expenditure at the beginning of the year? If that is so I am rather surprised, because it would be one of the lowest figures ever in the ODA budget. Does this need to disperse money quickly not militate against long-term development projects, particularly in agriculture, which we should be undertaking, or is it a result of African and other countries becoming so impoverished over the last 10 years that they are unable to implement the projects for which my right hon. Friend has allocated money? Is there not a case for a longer carry-over period, so that the projects can be carried out and properly funded in the following years?

Mr. Raison: Obviously there would be some convenience to me and to my Department if we had a long carry-over period. One must recognise that public expenditure requires a tight discipline and the system used for a long time is, broadly, effective.

Mr. Anderson: Does the Minister recognise the danger of aid fatigue on the part of donors, in view of the immense effort put in over the past year, particularly by voluntary agencies? What attempt will he make by way of example, through Government expenditure and generally, to spearhead a public relations exercise to show the continuing need in Africa?

Mr. Raison: People talk about the possibility of aid fatigue as it is called, and such fatigue may exist in the voluntary sector. However, the signs are that the British public still have a great determination to play a part in solving the problems of Africa, and the Government are equally committed to solving those problems.

Kenya

Mr. Merchant: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assistance his Department provides for rural development in Kenya.

Mr. Raison: In 1985–86 we expect to spend about £11·3 million to assist development in rural areas in Kenya. This covers activities in agriculture, livestock production, forestry, health, transport and the training of teachers for rural schools. I have just agreed to a grant of a further £4·37 million for applied research in the Embu, Meru and Isiolo districts, where we are seeking to achieve better use of arid lands.

Mr. Merchant: Will my right hon. Friend tell the House what contribution is being made from our aid programme towards the health and population programme in Kenya? There is high population growth in that country and anxiety has been expressed there about the increased rise in the population.

Mr. Raison: My hon. Friend is right. The rate of population growth in Kenya is over 4 per cent. a year, and that is one of the highest rates in the world. We are contributing to an integrated rural health and family planning project. We have also financed the construction of six rural dispensaries and a rural demonstration centre, and have recently undertaken to finance a district hospital in Isiolo.

Mr. Beith: Was the right hon. Gentleman satisfied, after his visit to Kenya, that expenditure of so large a sum of money—£21 million of last year's aid—on the Nkubu road project was a satisfactory priority and one that was well directed towards rural economic needs?

Mr. Raison: I was completely satisfied. The road is a fine piece of engineering. On top of that, the project is essentially designed to serve the rural community east of Mount Kenya, and I am sure that it will do that.

Mr. Moynihan: Will my right hon. Friend consider more smallholder agricultural projects in rural development schemes in Kenya?

Mr. Raison: My hon. Friend has made a good point. I should be happy to discuss it with him.

Mr. Pavitt: In view of the importance of rural democratic co-operatives for coffee growing and marketing in Kenya, may I ask what special action the right hon. Gentleman is taking to provide the training necessary to enable those co-operatives to play a proper part in rural development?

Mr. Raison: The record of co-operatives across Africa, as elsewhere, is somewhat mixed. They are certainly more useful in marketing than in production. I am happy to look at the hon. Gentleman's specific point.

Aid and Trade

Mr. Spearing: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is his estimate of the likely balance in the Vote for the aid and trade appropriation at the end of March.

Mr. Raison: I hope that the Vote will be fully spent, but spending on the aid and trade provision is subject to many uncertainties about the acceptance and timing of commercial contracts.

Mr. Spearing: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the amount can vary considerably? For instance, last year, one project in India—the Balco power station—cost £10 million. If the variation in the aid and trade provision can be so great, is it not possible to vary the amount in respect of rural development projects, such as those to which the right hon. Gentleman referred a short time ago?

Mr. Raison: The essential point one must bear in mind is that all that funding—whether it is the aid and trade provision or conventional aid—has to come out of the

overall aid budget. Managing that budget is a difficult operation. I believe that the facts show that our record in managing is very good.

Mr. Bowen Wells: Is that not an argument for making more aid and trade provision commitments so that we achieve the expected disbursement by the end of each year?

Mr. Raison: The aid and trade allocations are much higher than the amount that is taken up. Obviously, not every contract is successful. Getting it right is a difficult matter, but, by and large, I believe that our record is successful.

Mr. Stuart Holland: Surely the reality is that the right hon. Gentleman is planning to increase the aid and trade provision tenfold over the next two to three years—a major increase. Does that not contrast in practice with, for example, the right hon. Gentleman's unwillingness to finance a refugee study programme at the University of Oxford, which would have major implications for developing countries?

Mr. Raison: The hon. Gentleman has got it totally wrong. There is no plan to increase the aid and trade provision tenfold during the next few years. There is a sensible plan to bring in a new loan facility, but it will not result in such an increase.

Advancement of Women

Mr. Deakins: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what are the implications for his Department's policy on development of the conclusions of the United Nations Nairobi conference set out in forward-looking strategies for the advancement of women.

Mr. Raison: My Department has long sought to ensure that the interests of women are taken into account throughout the development process. The conclusions of Nairobi, which were accepted by consensus, require implementation by donors and recipients alike. We are doing our full part through the aid programme.

Mr. Deakins: Are not special efforts required from the right hon. Gentleman's Department, particularly in view of the conclusions of the Nairobi conference, which, I am happy to say, are now available in the Vote Office for hon. Members? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, for example, in Africa women do most of the work, including about 90 per cent. of the agricultural work? Surely that should be taken into account in considering aid projects in that part of the world?

Mr. Raison: The hon. Gentleman is right. It is evident that women in Africa and elsewhere in the world have an enormous role. I can claim that my Department has long recognised that role. In assessing projects, we look carefully at their likely impact on women in the area. I believe that we have a good record. I propose to make a grant of £50,000 in the next financial year to the United Nations development fund for women, which I believe will be very welcome.

Crown Agents

Mr. Gale: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commowealth Affairs if he is satisfied that the service provided by the Crown Agents to other governmental organisations presents, in all cases, good value for money.

Mr. Raison: Yes, but problems arise in all organisations and the Crown Agents should be able to deal with them.

Mr. Gale: I had hoped that my right hon. Friend would take the opportunity to comment on our excellent aid programme in the Gambia. As part of that aid programme, the ODA is supplying Land Rovers. Land Rovers have to be bought through the Crown Agents and commission is paid on them. Would it not be more satisfactory if the ODA were able to buy the vehicles direct from the manufacturer at a discount and thus provide more aid?

Mr. Raison: I can confirm from my own experience that we are running a good aid programme in the Gambia. I acknowledge that there have been problems with Land Rovers supplied by the Crown Agents. However, I think that the case for operating through the Crown Agents is a good one. It is important to have competence and integrity in the procurement operation. I believe that the Crown Agents can provide that.

Falkland Islands

Mr. Greenway: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he has any new plans for land purchase in the Falkland Islands; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Raison: I have agreed to an allocation of £550,743 from the 1982 £31 million Falkland Islands development aid grant to enable the Falkland Islands Development Corporation to buy Fox Bay west from the Falkland Islands Company. The farm will subsequently be sub-divided and sold to local buyers.

Mr. Greenway: May I welcome that admirable news from my right hon. Friend? Does he agree that any move which gives land to local people for development must be good news?

Mr. Raison: Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend. Our programme has been well judged. We have been careful not to move too rapidly, but I think that the steps we have taken have proved sensible, and we shall continue in that way.

Philippines

Mr. Tom Clarke: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will state the level of overseas aid to the Philippines in each of the last three years.

Mr. Raison: We have a small technical co-operation programme which in the years 1982, 1983 and 1984 amounted to £0·177 million, £0·190 million and £0·225 million respectively. Investments in this period by the Commonwealth Development Corporation and disbursements from the aid and trade provision totalled £6·7 million and £1·4 million respectively.

Mr. Clarke: Does not the contribution which the Minister has just outlined, as well as the House's commitment to human rights, demand that the Minister should take this opportunity to condemn the blatant rejection of democracy in the Philippines? Will he join every other civilised country in saying that the people of the Philippines have voted for a change and it is time that their democratic wishes were respected?

Mr. Raison: It is not for me to comment on the general political position in the Philippines. However, I can confirm that we are watching it carefully from the point of view of aid and thinking carefully about what we should be doing in that area.

Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd.

Mr. John Smith: (by private notice) asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will make a statement on the Department of Trade and Industry's decision to cancel the decision to extend the deadline date for completing the sale of Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd.-Cammell Laird Group.

The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Mr. Peter Morrison): Last Thursday the Government proposed a short postponement in the date for the receipt of bids for the sale of Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd. to allow prospective bidders for the company to tender simultaneously for the first Trident submarine contract. The prospective bidders, however, saw practical difficulties in such a delay and I therefore decided to proceed according to the original timetable.

Mr. Smith: Is it not the case that the Ministry of Defence made representations to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to postpone the date for the sale of the yard and that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry agreed to such a postponement, that one of the bidders contacted the Minister of State, and as a result it was decided to overturn the decision to delay it, so that it is now going ahead?
Can the Minister explain how it is possible to sell a yard when the asset value of the yard is said to be £40 million but the value of a contract, which has not yet been negotiated, is £400 million? How is it possible to fix any kind of price, having regard to the public interest, when the contract remains unfixed and unagreed? Was the Ministry of Defence not right to seek a postponement until that had been clarified, and is the Minister not wrong not to accept its advise?
As the Department of Trade and Industry has fixed a deadline which is inconsistent with the negotiating timetable of the Ministry of Defence, is it not clear that we have reached another situation in which the Government appear totally incapable of co-ordinating the activity of two separate Departments? Is it not clear also that the replacement of two Secretaries of State has not made the slightest difference to the incapacity of those Departments to work together? Above all, is it not now abundantly clear that the Government's privatisation dogma takes precedence over all other consequences of the public interest, including national defence?

Mr. Morrison: The date for the bids for Vickers shipyard has been known for a long time. Indeed, at the same time, over a long period, the negotiations between the Ministry of Defence and the shipyard on the Trident contract have been continuing, and are not quite finalised. Therefore, it seemed sensible—if the prospective bidders thought it was a good idea—to offer them the opportunity of extending the date for their bids. In the event, they decided not to. Therefore, it would have been incorrect to change the goal posts.

Mr. Cecil Franks: Would my hon. Friend care to comment on the disgraceful interference in the privatisation programme, for purely commercial reasons, by Trafalgar House? Is he aware that, by delaying for six weeks from tomorrow the date for bids,

Trafalgar House would have been able to use its City connections to know the amount of the Vickers' bid, which was to be put in tomorrow? Will my hon. Friend comment on the rumours which are rife, which appear to be well founded, that, once in control of the Vickers group, after a decent passage of time, the Trafalgar House group would close the Shipyards of Cammell Laird and transfer that business to Scott Lithgow, together with the business from Barrow? Finally, is my hon. Friend aware that, by the Ministry of Defence giving the reason for postponing the time scale and finalisation of the Trident contract, that would oblige the present Vickers management to settle that contract on terms which it would not have accepted at arm's length negotiations?

Mr. Morrison: The Government and I are concerned to get the best possible deal on Vickers shipyard so that we have a proper submarine manufacturing capacity—

Mr. John Evans: There is one now.

Mr. Morrison: And, indeed, in the private sector. As the hon. Gentleman will recall, it was not until 1977 that the submarine manufacturing capacity of Vickers was put into the public sector.
I apologise to the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) for not answering the second part of his question. I cannot anticipate what bids will come forward tomorrow or, indeed, on what terms.

Mr. Franks: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: I shall take it afterwards.

Mr. Frank Field: I thank the Minister for maintaining the timetable, which prevents Trafalgar House from gaining undue advantage in the sale. I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to the loose talk by some Trafalgar House officials that, should they be successful in the sale, they will close Cammell Laird shipyards. As Cammell Laird is the much smaller of the two yards, will the Minister pay particular attention to its interests when he decides what the future of the two yards should be?

Mr. Morrison: As the hon. Gentleman will realise, the bids go to British Shipbuilders, it examines them carefully and it then makes a recommendation to the Government, to which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Government give consent. The hon. Gentleman makes some important points about Cammell Laird. I realise that he has a constituency interest. I am sure that all those angles will be taken carefully into account before any recommendation is made to the Government by British Shipbuilders.

Mr. Alistair Burt: Will my hon Friend note the strong feelings on the issue in the north-west of England and accept that the task of promoting the Government's privatisation policy in that area will be made easier by the success of the VSEL consortium bringing, as it does, the interest of management, work force, community, patriotism and the Government together for a change?

Mr. Morrison: I appreciate what my hon. Friend says, but I think he will agree that we have to look at all the bids that come forward, because if we do not look at them all and take the best, that will not be in the interests of privatisation.

Mr. John Cartwright: Will the Minister assure the House that in their anxiety to encourage privatisation the Government do not intend to construct the contract for the first Trident submarine so as to make cancellation by a future Government extremely difficult even if the British people vote in a general election for such a cancellation?

Mr. Morrison: As the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, the contract is being negotiated on commercial terms. I agree with what he said about the Opposition's current policy towards the Trident missile and submarine. It makes a considerable difference.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: Is not the bleating of the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Franks) predictable in the circumstances? Is it not true that over the past one and half years the Labour party has been telling the people of Barrow that massive redundancies would arise from the privatisation of those shipyards, whether they were taken over by Trafalgar House or by anyone else? Is it not true that the future of those shipyards is fully secured only while they remain in the public sector? Is not the fact that the hon. Gentleman persists in coming to the House and making such ludicrous statements only a reflection of the inadequate way in which he has represented the shipyard workers in Barrow in the House over the past one and a half years?

Mr. Morrison: The real anxiety of all those who work in the shipyards, whether in Barrow or Birkenhead, is the Opposition's policy towards Trident. If it ever comes into being, it will ensure that work prospects on Barrow amd Birkenhead are much lower than they are now.

Mr. John Evans: How many millions of pounds of taxpayers' money have been spent over the past few years creating the facility to build Trident submarines at Barrow? How can it possibly be in the interests of those taxpayers for that yard to be privatised in advance of the signing of the multibillion pound Trident programme?

Mr. Morrison: I cannot give the hon. Gentleman the precise figure. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] I cannot give the figure off the top of my head. The sum will be taken into account when British Shipbuilders reviews the bids. I answered the hon. Gentleman's second question when I answered his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Monklands, East.

Social Security Benefits (Uprating)

The Secretary of State for Social Services (Mr. Norman Fowler): With permission. Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the uprating of social security benefits. As the House knows, benefits were increased only three months ago at the end of November. We have made it clear that we intend to move to April upratings from 1987 in order to bring tax and social security closer together and to ensure that benefit changes coincide with changes in rents and rates. The uprating that I am announcing today enables the transition to be made and is the second of these upratings in the 16-month period from November 1985 to April 1987.
Those further increases will be paid in the week beginning 28 July and will be based on the change in prices between May 1985 and January 1986 when the retail prices index rose by 1·1 per cent. The overall cost of the new increases will be an extra £410 million in a full year and they follow the 7 per cent. increases in benefits which were paid from last November. As a result, the retirement pension for a married couple will rise from £61·30 to £61·95 a week and for a single person from £38·30 to £38·70. Public service pensions will be increased by the same percentage as will benefits for disabled people and war pensioners. Mobility allowance will go up to £21·65 a week although transport costs have in fact fallen over the period. The basic rate of unemployment benefit will also be increased by 1·1 per cent. from £30·45 to £30·80 for a single person and from £49·25 to £49·80 for a married couple. Other main contributory and non-contributory benefits will be similarly increased.
I made it clear last year that the Government believe it right to continue child benefit for all children irrespective of the income of their parents, but I also said that we have to consider its level both in relation to overall priorities within social security and with the aim of doing more for families with children on low incomes. I have considered the uprating of child benefit on that basis. My conclusion is that child benefit should be increased by 10p a week to £7·10—rather more than the rate of inflation. The older children's rates for supplementary benefit and the age-related amounts for family income supplement will also go up by slightly more than 1·1 per cent.
Three upratings in 16 months places inevitable administrative burdens and costs on local authorities and local offices of the Department of Health and Social Security. To contain this extra work sensibly I propose to increase the long-term rate of supplementary benefit and the housing benefit needs allowance by the same cash amount as will apply to retirement pension, which means putting supplementary benefit up by 1·1 per cent. although the increase in prices after excluding housing costs is 1·2 per cent.
For similar reasons, I do not propose to make any general changes in the additional amounts paid with supplementary benefit. In some cases no increase would be due in any event, and in others only small amounts. However, I have thought it right to increase the higher rate of heating addition which goes to the very elderly, the severely disabled and to people with homes which are specially difficult to heat. This addition will increase from £5·45 to £5·55 a week.


One other change will be made from this July which is consistent with bringing the current supplementary benefit scheme into line with the new proposed income support arrangements. From the date of the uprating, no new awards of the non-householder housing addition will be made between the ages of 21 and 24. Equally, no deductions will be made from the householder's housing benefit or supplementary benefit in respect of such non-dependants in this age group. This means that the poorest households will remain fully protected. There will be no increase in the amount of non-dependant deductions generally nor will there he any increase in the deduction from benefit which applies during industrial disputes.
There are two other matters I should mention. First, over the last few years there has been a steep rise in supplementary benefit single payments. Since 1981 the number of these payments has risen from under 1 million a year to over 4 million and the real cost has increased by over five times to more than £300 million a year. My hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security has reviewed the position and, as a result, I am today referring draft regulations to the Social Security Advisory Committee for consultation in the normal way.
Secondly, concern has been expressed over future policy on the payment of benefits at post offices. In a report by the Public Accounts Committee last summer the possibility was discussed that cash incentives should be offered to beneficiaries to encourage payment directly into bank accounts. I am aware that this has led to anxiety that the existence of many sub-post offices might be threatened if inducements were paid which reduced significantly the volume of benefit business which they transact. To remove that anxiety I want to make it clear that the Government do not intend to offer cash incentives. We recognise that very many people wish to retain the option of being paid in cash at post offices, and it is clear that post offices will retain an important role in the payment of benefits in the future. To ensure that the service to the public is as effective as possible, a joint study is being carried out by the Post Office and my Department to see what improvements can be made.
I am laying before the House a full schedule detailing all benefit rates payable from next July. This uprating will mean that in 1986–87 spending on social security will be almost £43 billion—that is 31 per cent. of all public spending.
The last time that an uprating statement was made less than a year after the previous one was in 1975, but the circumstances today are different. In 1975 inflation was out of control and the value of savings was being sharply eroded. Today inflation is low, which is to the benefit of the whole nation—but perhaps most of all to millions of pensioners. This interim increase keeps pensions ahead of the rise in prices since this Government came into office and I will be making a further uprating statement in the autumn.

Mr. Michael Meacher: Is the Secretary of State aware that an increase of only 1·1 per cent. for pensioners is insulting when, by the time they get it in July, the annual surge in prices following the Budget and rates rises will have pushed up inflation to probably four times that level? Is he aware that it is deeply offensive to offer a single pensioner a crumb of 40p a week, enough to buy a couple of first-class stamps, when at the same

time the Chancellor is deploying every device to make tax handouts next month running into thousands of pounds for the well-off and the rich?
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that he is cheating pensioners when he says that the change in the uprating date makes no difference and that what pensioners may lose in this uprating they will make up in the next? Is he aware that if the uprating had taken place at the normal time in November, single pensioners would have received double the extra cash from a 4 per cent. increase over a four-month period to April 1987 than they will get under today's uprating from a 1 per cent. increase over an eight-month period to April 1987? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that every time the Government make a simplification or adjustment in social security that always involves a cut, and on this occasion the change in the uprating arrangements will mean a loss for pensioners of £120 million, which they will not recover?
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that if Labour's formula for uprating benefits in line with prices or earnings, whichever was higher, had not been levelled down by the Government in 1980, a single pensioner would now be receiving a pension of £4 a week more and a married couple one of £6·50 a week more? Is he further aware that if Labour's earnings link had been retained, even this shortened assessment period of the last eight months, during which earnings rose by over 4 per cent., would have given single pensioners a rise of £1·60 a week, instead of the measly 40p which they are being offered today?
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that an increase. of 10p for child benefit is piffling and does not begin to compensate 7 million mothers for the loss of 35p per child per week which they suffered at the last uprating?
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it is a mean innovation to lower the uprating formula for the poorest claimants of all on supplementary benefit, which is what he is doing today, and, although the cut today is small, in the future it may involve significant losses for those on the lowest breadline?
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the statement means that there will be no increases in 1986 for pensioners under 80 for diets or heating, and that the increases for the very elderly and severely disabled are precisely 10p a week—not enough to keep a bar fire going even for one afternoon?
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the statement represents yet another attack on young people's incomes, when the 21 to 24-year-olds are already at the forefront of a Government drive for poverty wages? Is he also aware that the statement heralds the end of single payments for essential furniture, bedding and clothing for the poorest claimants? Where, in future, will a single mother or unemployed family find the money to pay for even a secondhand cooker or gas fire? Is this not paving the way for the abolition under the social fund of claimants' rights for basic essentials which any civilised society would provide?
This Scrooge-like and miserly statement gives no one more than the barest minimum, and it gives millions of pensioners, single mothers, the unemployed and children a great deal less in real terms than they had even last year.

Mr. Fowler: I entirely reject what the hon. Gentleman has just said. He talks about Labour's formula. We have costed Labour's formula on the basis of the interview that


the hon. Gentleman gave last week on social security plans. The proposals which the hon. Gentleman is putting forward would mean an extra £15 billion a year. The public will not be taken in by such deceptions.
The uprating follows a 7 per cent. uprating in November, when inflation was only 5·5 per cent. It is the second of three upratings between November 1985 and April 1987. Between May 1985 and January 1986, 1·1 per cent. was the measure of inflation. An autumn uprating statement will follow, based on the period between January and September. We are spending an extra £410 million, which will take social security spending to more than £43 billion.
For pensioners, the increase—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett), who keeps on interrupting from the Front Bench, wishes to come to the Dispatch Box and question me, I invite her to do so. For pensioners, the increase comes on top of an increase last November, when pensions were increased by £4 a week for a married couple and £2·50 for a single pensioner. Clearly the Government remain committed to keeping pensions at least in line with prices.
With regard to uprating dates, I believe that the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher), with his knowledge of social security, will accept that it is not possible to have an uprating at the end of November 1986 and another in April 1987. The DHSS would have to work on two upratings at the same time, and the hon. Gentleman will be the first to confirm that that is simply not possible.
The increase in child benefit demonstrates our belief that, under the tax and social security systems, child benefit is the only way of recognising the added responsibility that children represent. That is why we have increased child benefit by 10p.
On the question of the additional requirements, I have made it clear that we shall uprate the higher rate of heating addition, which goes to the elderly and the severely disabled and to hard-to-heat homes.
The hon. Gentleman is wrong about single payments. He has got the facts wrong, and I suggest that he reads what is set out in my statement.
The hon. Gentleman is saying that low inflation is of no benefit to pensioners. That is untrue. The banana republic economics which the hon. Gentleman wishes to practice, which provides high inflation so that upratings can seem higher, is ludicrous and is entirely in line with the policy of the Labour Government, which presided over an increase in inflation of 110 per cent.

Sir Ian Gilmour: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on maintaining the real value of child benefit. As child benefit is the best way of dealing with family proverty, will he do his best on the next occasion to restore the previous cut?

Mr. Fowler: I shall take into account what my right hon. Friend has said. I accept that child benefit is the only way in the social security and tax systems of recognising the undoubted added expense that children represent. We hope that under the new system of family credit, which will be in operation in 1988, that position will be better recognised and that more low-income families with children will be helped. I shall in the next uprating bear in mind what my right hon. Friend said about child benefit.

Mr. Archy Kirkwood: The Secretary of State said that he was spending an extra £400 million. Does he accept that when the increases reach the pensioners' pockets they will be seen as derisory, and that those who do not follow these matters will be confused? As the statutory uprating percentage is small, will he take this opportunity to follow the advice of the SSAC and made the link with earnings, not with price increases? If he were to do that, it would give him the opportunity to appear generous.
Will the Secretary of State tell us more about the terms of reference of the Post Office study and the time scale for the report?

Mr. Fowler: The kind of earnings link which the hon. Gentleman advocates would have cost an extra £3 billion during the lifetime of the Government. From the pensioners' point of view, it is important that pensions should be uprated in line with prices and that inflation should be brought down. The most significant achievement of the Government has been to bring down inflation. Ten years ago inflation was running at between 23 and 24 per cent. That was dramatically bad news for pensioners.
We recognise that many people want payments in cash at post offices, so it is sensible that the service is made as good as possible. We are considering what improvements can be made to counter services in the survey which the DHSS and the Post Office are carrying out.

Mr. Ian Gow: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the major cause of the synthetic indignation shown by the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) is the Government's massive achievement in keeping the rate of inflation at only 1·1 per cent. between May 1985 and January 1986? [Interruption.] Can he tell us now, or will he circulate in the Official Report, the best and the worst figures for inflation achieved by the Labour Government in any period between May and January, so that we and our pensioners can see the Government's genuine achievement?

Mr. Fowler: My hon. Friend is on to the right point, and to judge from the reaction of the Opposition, they also recognise that. I shall seek to set out in the Official Report the detailed figures that my hon. Friend seeks. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Derby, South makes a great deal of noise. I wish that she would come to the Dispatch Box and ask me a question. If she is not the Labour party spokesman on social security, perhaps she should make a takeover bid.
During the last period of the Labour Government inflation rose by 110 per cent. That was their economic achievement. At this time 10 years ago, inflation was between 23 and 24 per cent. That was another economic achievement of the Labour Government.

Mr. Frank Field: Given the past defeats of the Secretary of State to increase child benefit, I congratulate him on today's announcement and say that it is welcome to both sides of the House. Will he comment on his uprating formula? By changing that formula, has he not gained substantial savings for the Exchequer, which will allow him to double the Christmas bonus? Will he give pensioners that increase, or will cheat them of it?

Mr. Fowler: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point on child benefit, which is in stark contrast to the view expressed by the hon. Member for Oldham, West.


With regard to indexing, we are talking about the difference between 1·1 and 1·2 per cent. That is a difference of 5p or 10p, and in some cases there is virtually no difference. The savings made from that would not remotely pay the cost of the increase that the hon. Gentleman seeks.

Mr. Robert McCrindle: In describing the uprating statement as an insult, was not the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) delivering the most complete insult, by making it clear that a future Labour Government would have learnt nothing from the inflation experience of the previous Labour Adminstration? I note what my right hon. Friend proposes for heating benefits, but does he feel, as some of his hon. Friends feel, that the severe weather payments are not working effectively? Can we anticipate a review of the system before the next uprating statement?

Mr. Fowler: As my hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security said, severe weather payments are being reviewed. The House will want the review completed and a decision on it before the next uprating statement. Last year, exceptionally severe weather payments amounted to about £1·7 million. The main help for heating comes both through the supplementary benefit scale rates and through the heating addition. Help with heating costs now totals some £400 million, which is £140 million more in real terms than under the Labour Government.

Mr. George Foulkes: Will the Secretary of State confirm that he originally intended to make the statement tomorrow, but that because he was so embarrassed by the fact that it is so mean and miserly he produced it today, thinking that he would get an easier ride in a thin House? I assure him that that will not be so. The choice before the Government was either to give pensioners a real increase, instead of just keeping them up with the cost of living, or to give tax handouts to the rich. The Government have chosen the latter, as we shall see in the Budget, and the pensioners will be screwed again to pay for them.

Mr. Fowler: The hon. Gentleman has it wrong on both counts—not untypically.

Mr. Foulkes: That is not true.

Mr. Fowler: The hon. Gentleman is mistaken, and I shall put it no higher than that. If he seeks to challenge that, any of my hon. Friends and anyone who knows anything about the matter will confirm it.
On the question of tax thresholds, the hon. Gentleman talks about tax reductions for the rich, but the Government seek to take many people on low earnings out of tax. That seems to be a good policy.

Mr. Tony Favell: I recognise the importance of providing benefits for the needy, but will my right hon. Friend spare a word for the millions of people who must go to work to earn those benefits? Will he assure them that he will not buy short-term cheap popularity at the expense of jacking up inflation?

Mr. Fowler: Yes, and I think that both sides of the House will agree with me on that. The hon. Member for Oldham, West proposes to spend an additional £15 billion to £20 billion a year, which must be raised from taxpayers. I am content to compare the Government's policies with those of the Labour party, because Labour party policies will never be put into effect.

Mr. Robin Corbett: Is the Secretary of State aware that the 40p a week increase for a single pensioner will purchase about six eggs, two small lumps of coal, one and a half small loaves or 110 peanuts? What has he to say to the 10,000 pensioners in my constituency who are fearful of putting on an electric fire because they cannot meet the bill?

Mr. Fowler: I would say that the increase comes on top of last November's increase, when pensions were increased by £4 a week for a married couple and £2·50 for a single person. I would also tell the people of Erdington that the Government have been more successful than any other Government in recent times in bringing down inflation. The hon. Gentleman had better realise that low inflation is good both for industry and for the millions of pensioners.

Mr. Andrew Bowden: Will my right hon. Friend look urgently at the regulations for the extra heating allowance for severe weather in relation to the savings figure of £500, which is wholly unfair? Will he take steps to ensure that applications for money are considered on the basis of receipted bills, not merely unpaid bills?
With regard to the three pension increases during the change-over period, will try right hon. Friend assure me that no pensioner will be worse off in future when the assessment is made, assuming that the three increases are based only on the retail prices index? If that were to be the case, will he ensure that the final increase in the autumn is above the rate of inflation, to take that into account?

Mr. Fowler: I cannot make any promises about the future, but the Government are committed to keeping pensions ahead of prices, and we have also made it clear that we shall abide by the historic method of measuring that inflation. That is fair and reasonable, and that was put before the country clearly at the general election.
I shall bear in mind what my hon. Friend said about heating, and if we can help along the lines that he has suggested I shall seek to do so. The severe weather allowance is only one, and a small, part of the help with heating that we are providing. The fact that £400 million is being devoted to heating costs shows the priority that we place on that help.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Will the Secretary of State and his Friends in the Tory Government use all the information that he has given the House today and put it in a leaflet for the Fulham pensioners in the by-election campaign? If he does, there is a fair chance that some of his Friends will not want to take the leaflets round, but he will get a few takers among Labour party members, such is the miserly offer that he has made today. Is he aware that he should not have instructed the hon. Member for Hove (Mr. Sainsbury) to come here the other Friday and object to the Standing Charges (Abolition) Bill, which would have relieved pensioners of fairly substantial charges on heating and other bills? Had he not done so, the announcement today, plus a little extra, might have got more than one cheer from the many millions of pensioners, who will now say that there must be a lot of money around because those on top salaries received 19 per cent. extra only six months ago, and top business managers have had increases of 17 per cent. overall in 1985, while the pensioners are to be given 40p. What a scandal. The right hon. Gentleman should be ashamed of himself.

Mr. Fowler: The hon. Gentleman again ignores the fact that this increase follows the 7 per cent. uprating in November, when inflation was at 5·5 per cent. He also ignores the fact that inflation has been brought down by this Government, which is of considerable benefit to millions of pensioners. As to the heating benefit, the hon. Gentleman also ignores the fact that the Government are devoting £140 million more to heating than did the last Labour Government.

Mr. Nigel Forman: I welcome the figures in my right hon. Friend's statement, notably the continued price protection for pensioners, but does he realise that many Conservative Members would give him the strongest possible support if he would negotiate with the Treasury a real increase in child benefit? The recent record shows that a married man's tax allowance has gone up by 17 per cent. in real terms, but child benefit, before the announcement today, had decreased by 3 per cent. in real terms.

Mr. Fowler: I understand what my hon. Friend says, and clearly the Government have decided, by increasing child benefit, to take account of those feelings. All I can say is that for the next uprating statement in the autumn we shall bear in mind what my hon. Friend has said.

Mr. Charles Kennedy: We give the Secretary of State credit for the consolidation of child benefit, although I echo the sentiments expressed on the Conservative Benches that more should be done as soon as possible to restore it to its real value following the developments of last year.
There will be a welcome in many constituencies for the statement about the security of the future of sub-post offices. Is not the most profoundly damaging aspect of the Secretary of State's statement the circular going to the Social Security Advisory Committee for consultation, which encompasses some quite horrendous constraints on future single payments? Does this not auger badly for the future of the social fund? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that by constraining the level and range of single payments the Government, who have become known for selling off the family silver, are showing that they want to inhibit the right of the poor to keep their family furniture?

Mr. Fowler: I thank the hon. Gentleman for what he said about child benefit and the policy on post offices. When he has had a chance to look at the proposals on single payments more closely, he will see the case set out. Single payments have escalated since 1981 from 834,000 to over 4 million in 1985. That is not a simple product of unemployment. In 1981 there were 231 single payments per 1,000 claimants, while in 1985 there were 880 such payments per 1,000. As the hon. Gentleman will know, substantial campaigns are being run by a number of councils and others to increase the take-up of these payments. There is an overwhelming case for reform and the proposals that we have laid out for consultation with the SSAC strike a fair balance between the rights of the individual claimant and those of taxpayers generally.

Mrs. Virginia Bottomley: Do not pensioners want financial security and predictability, and does not the reaction of the Labour party suggest that it has failed to learn the lessons of the past? Should it not recognise the fear under which pensioners live, of inflation rising again to 25 per cent.? Does my right hon. Friend

agree that since the Government came into office pensions have more than kept up with prices, and that what matters to pensioners is not letting inflation run away, as it is the most cruel tax of all?

Mr. Fowler: My hon. Friend is right. Pensions in this period of government have kept ahead of prices, but the Government have also brought inflation down. Everything that the hon. Member for Oldham, West has said during this and other exchanges shows that the Labour party has learnt nothing from the past.

Mr. Ernie Ross: The Minister will know that, despite what his hon. Friends are saying, pensioners want the security of knowing that they can put clothes on their backs, shoes on their feet and coal on their fires, which they will not be able to do following this statement. How much will the right hon. Gentleman save by moving the uprating from November to July?

Mr. Fowler: It is not possible to say that, because there is no way in which I can predict what the May to May inflation will be. That would be the measure if there were an uprating in November, but the whole question is academic because, for the reasons that I have stated, it would not be practical to have a November uprating.

Mr. Tim Smith: Does not the statement graphically underline the Government's achievement in getting inflation down—something that is of benefit to pensioners in Fulham and elsewhere? Has my right hon. Friend seen the forecast yesterday from the London Business School, which shows inflation moving below 4 per cent. this year, and 3 per cent. next year? Is this not the best possible news for anybody living on a fixed income or having a fixed amount of capital?

Mr. Fowler: Yes, and that is what the public will see as the position. This is good not only for pensioners and those living on fixed incomes but for employment, business and industry. If the Labour party wants to stand as the party of high inflation, it can do so. This party and this Government stand for low inflation, which is to the benefit of the nation.

Mr. John Evans: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the announcement of these miserable sums will be greeted with anger and disbelief by pensioners and their organisations everywhere? They will bear in mind his Government's performance when they cast their votes at the next election. Is he also aware that his announcement of a 10p uprating in the heating allowance is adding insult to injury at a time when the severe weather payments are a national scandal? Will he answer the question about how much benefit there will be to the Treasury by changing the formula?

Mr. Fowler: If the hon. Gentleman means the change to May to May, that would depend on the May rate of inflation, and there is no way of knowing that at the moment, self-evidently. Also, there is no way in which we can have a November uprating followed by an April uprating. As to the other points, I am content that the Government are judged on their record in the economic and social sectors, compared with the disaster that we inherited from the Labour Government.

Mr. Robin Squire: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on increasing the child benefit by more than the rate of inflation, but I gently remind him that the


2·5p per week is modest when set against the 35p a week reduction in real terms last November. Is he aware that many Conservative right hon. and hon. Members will expect even greater progress by the time of the next statement?

Mr. Fowler: I have taken on board my hon. Friend's point. I hope he will recognise that by introducing the family credit system we are seeking to help an additional 200,000 families with children on low incomes. My hon. Friend should concentrate on the two policies, but I shall take into account what he has said about child benefit.

Mr. David Winnick: Is the Secretary of State aware that if he had any self-respect he would feel humiliated at having to make a statement about these miserable increases? Is he aware that one of the reasons for the unpopularity of the Conservative party is that there is a growing recognition that this Cabinet is concerned with helping the rich in every way, and is utterly unconcerned about the plight of the unemployed, pensioners and others who have to live on the smallest possible incomes? Does the right hon. Gentleman not realise how nauseating it is to see Conservative Member after Conservative Member get up in this Chamber and praise him? They are extremely complacent about these increases, although in many cases those Conservative Members are earning large sums of money because they have two, three or four jobs. They are in no position to lecture pensioners who are having to struggle on £50, £60 or £70 a week.

Mr. Fowler: The hon. Gentleman is making a constituency speech. He is mistaken if he thinks that low inflation is of benefit only to the rich. The Government's policies have resulted in low inflation. We are also trying to take out of tax many more of the people who are on low incomes. Those are the realities, rather than the complete nonsense that the hon. Gentleman talks on every ocassion.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I shall call those hon. Members who have been rising to ask a question, but I can allow these exchanges to continue for only another four minutes before I call the Opposition Front Bench.

Mr. K. Harvey Proctor: If the elderly, the sick, the disabled and those on fixed incomes are the hardest hit by high levels of inflation—which they are—should we not all rejoice at the low level of inflation that underpins my right hon. Friend's statement?

Mr. Fowler: Yes, that is right. I have said during these exchanges that low inflation is of the greatest benefit to the most vulnerable in our country.

Mr. Michael Stern: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on that part of his statement which shows his confidence in the ability of the Post Office and sub-post office network to compete with the banks, provided that no element of subsidy is involved. Will he ensure that pensioners and others retain the right to choose for themselves their method of collecting benefits?

Mr. Fowler: Yes, I recognise the concern. That is why I believe that it is right to make clear the Government's policy. I hope that the statement of policy will be noted

not only by those concerned but by the sub-postmasters. Freedom of choice for the beneficiary is implicit in our policy.

Mr. Richard Hickmet: Will my right hon. Friend tell the House what would be the position of pensioners today if inflation were running at 25 per cent., rather than at 5 per cent.? Am I right in thinking that pensions have increased by more than 10 per cent. since the Government came to office in 1979? What would be the position of pensioners if the £24 billion of public expenditure promises that have been made by the Labour party were put into effect? Would not the result be a dramatic increase in inflation?

Mr. Fowler: Since November 1978 there has been a 98 per cent. increase in pensions, compared with a 91 or 92 per cent. increase in prices. A 25 per cent. inflation rate would have the clearest effect on the savings of pensioners. During the last Labour Government savings were eroded and tax was increased. As far as one can tell, that is what is promised by the Labour party if it ever gains power again.

Mr. Kenneth Hind: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his announcement about the future of sub-post offices. Will he confirm that today's announcement about pensioners means that for the foreseeable future they can rely upon the Government to allow them to continue to use post offices for the payment of their pensions?

Mr. Fowler: Yes. In addition, everyone will have the freedom to choose which form of payment he or she requires.

Mr. Christopher Chope: I, too, thank my right hon. Friend for what he said about sub-post offices. Is he aware that profitable urban sub-post offices are still being closed down by the Post Office? Will he assure me that in his negotiations with the Post Office he will ask it to ensure that it maintains its existing network of profitable urban sub-post offices?

Mr. Fowler: My hon. Friend's question goes a little further than my responsibilities, but I shall bear in mind what he has said.

Mr. Peter Bruinvels: I, too, welcome the lifeline that has been given to sub-post offices by my right hon. Friend. Their future has been in question.
When my right hon. Friend has completed his social security review of those who claim unemployment benefit but who may have a job and may not therefore necessarily be unemployed, will he ensure that the additional £410 million is provided for those who are genuinely unemployed and also for doubling next year's Christmas bonus for the elderly?

Mr. Fowler: I cannot give any commitment about the Christmas bonus. However, nobody wants benefit payments to be made if they are not justified.

Mr. Meacher: The Secretary of State has ostentatiously evaded two central issues. Will he confirm that the cuts in pension increases as a result of this double change in the uprating arrangements until April 1987 means that pensioners will lose about £120 million? Will he acknowledge that most of this money will end up in tax


cuts which, contrary to the Secretary of State's claims today, the Prime Minister has recently admitted go overwhelmingly to the better off and the rich?
Secondly, the Secretary of State has made several claims about lower inflation. Will he confirm that what matters to pensioners is the real level of the pension increase over and above inflation? Will he acknowledge that after six years of Labour Government the real increase in the pension was 20 per cent., but that after six years under this Government the real increase has been only 5 to 7 per cent.?

Mr. Fowler: The hon. Gentleman has always ignored, and he continues to ignore, any savings that pensioners may have made. During the period of the last Labour Government inflation increased over 110 per cent. Not a great deal of imagination is required to know what happened to the savings of millions of pensioners. Until the hon. Gentleman takes that point on board, he will continue to bring forward only half-baked social security plans.
As for the May to May proposals, it is not possible to have an uprating at the end of November 1986 and another one in April 1987. Therefore the issue does not arise.

Following is the schedule:


New Social Security Benefit rates



Old rates
New rates


Attendance Allowance


higher rate
30·60
30·95


lower rate
20·45
20·65


Child Benefit—each child
7·00
7·10


Child's Special Allowance
8·05
8·05


Death Grant (Lump sum)
30·00
30·00


Dependency Additions


Adult Dependency Additions For spouse or person looking after children, with:
23·00
23·25


retirement pension on own insurance, invalidity pension, unemployability supplement and, if beneficiary over pension age, unemployment benefit non-contributory retirement pension, invalid care and severe disablement allowance
13·75
13·90


sickness benefit if beneficiary over pension age
22·00
22·25


unemployment benefit:


standard rate
18·80
19·00


three-quarter rate
14·10
14·25


half rate
9·40
9·50


maternity allowance/sickness benefit


standard rate
18·00
18·20


three-quarter rate
13·50
13·65


half rate
9·00
9·10


Child Dependency Additions


For each child with:


retirement pension, widows benefit, invalidity benefit, invalid care and severe disablement allowance, higher rate industrial death benefit, unemployability supplement an sickness/unemployment benefit if beneficiary over pension age
8·05
8·05






Old rates
New rates


Earnings Rules


Retirement Pension
75·00
75·00


Invalid Care Allowance
12·00
12·00


Unemployment Benefit Subsidiary Occupation (daily rate)
2·00
2·00


Therapeutic Earnings Limit
25·00
25·50


Industrial Injuries Unemployability supplement permitted earnings level (annual amount)
1,300·00
1,326·00


War Pensioners' Unemployability Supplement permitted earnings level
25·00
25·50


Earnings rule for Adult dependant's benefit with Sickness Benefit where


claimant is under pension age
18·00
18·20


claimant is over pension age
22·00
22·25


Maternity Allowance
18·00
18·20


Unemployment Benefit where


claimant is under pension age
18·80
19·00


claimant is over pension age
23·00
23·25


Retirement pension, invalidity pension, Severe Disablement Allowance, Unemployability supplement where dependent living with claimant
30·45
30·80


As above where dependant still qualifies for tapered earnings rule
45·09
45·09


Retirement pension, Invalidity pension and Unemployability Supplement where dependant is non-resident
23·00
23·25


Severe Disablement Allowance where dependant is non-resident
13·75
13·90


Invalid care allowance wife or female housekeeper
13·75
13·90


Child dependency additions point at which CDAs payable with long-term benefits are affected by earnings of claimant's partner


for first child
85·00
85·00


for each subsequent child
10·00
10·00


Family Income Supplement


Prescribed amount for one-child family, where child is aged


under 11
97·50
98·60


11–15
98·50
99·60


16 and over
99·50
100·60


increase for each additional child


under 11
11·50
11·65


11–15
12·50
12·65


16 and over
13·50
13·65


Maximum amount for one-child family where child is aged


under 11
25·00
25·30


11–15
25·50
25·80


16 and over
26·00
26·30


increase for each additional child


under 11
2·50
2·55


11–15
3·00
3·05


16 and over
3·50
3·55


Guardian's Allowance


each child
8·05
8·05







Old rates
New rates


Hospital Downrating


20 per cent. rate
7·65
7·75


40 per cent. rate
15·30
15·50


60 per cent. Rate
22·95
23·25


Resettlement benefit
62·00
62·00


Reduction where wife has pension on own insurance (category A)
22·95
23·20


Housing Benefit


Needs allowances


single person
47·70
48·10


couple/single parent
70·20
70·85


single handicapped person
53·20
53·65


couple (one handicapped) or handicapped single parent
75·70
76·40


couple (both handicapped)
78·25
79·00


pensioner addition
·85
·85


dependent child addition
14·50
14·60


Non-dependant deductions/contributions


Rate rebates


aged 18 to pension age, and not on supplementary benefit or YTS, nor qualifying for modified deduction after 56 days
2·60
2·60


of pension age, or over 21 and on supplementary benefit or qualifying for modified deduction after 56 days*
1·10
1·10


age 16–17 and not on supplementary benefit, YTS or Severe Disablement Allowance
1·10
1·10


Rent rebates and allowances


aged 18 to pension age and not on supplementary benefit or YTS nor qualifying for modified deduction after 56 days
7·80
7·80


of pension age, or over 21 and on supplementary benefit or qualifying for modified deduction after 56 days* qualifying for modified deduction
2·80
2·80


aged 16–17 and not on supplementary benefit, YTS or Severe Disablement Allowance
2·80
2·80


Disregards for:


Claimant's earnings
17·30
17·30


spouse's earnings
5·00
5·00


various pensions etc.
4·00
4·00


for maintenance of non grant-aided students (maximum)
23·60
23·85


Deductions

applied to grant-aided students† London
20·80
20·80


Elsewhere
15·75
15·75


for amenities (maximum) heating
6·55
6·70


hot water
·80
·80


lighting
·50
·50


cooking
·80
·80


all fuel
8·65
8·80


Expenses allowed for sub-tenants


furnished letting
3·00
3·00


unfurnished letting
1·50
1·50


garage or outbuilding
·40
·40


Industrial Death Benefit


Widow's pension first 26 weeks
53·60
54·20


higher permanent rate
38·85
39·25






Old rates
New rates


lower permanent rate
11·49
11·61


Allowances for children paid with pension
8·05
8·05


Industrial Disablement Pension


over 18 or under 18 with dependents


per cent.


100
62·50
63·20


90
56·25
56·88


80
50·00
50·56


70
43·75
44·24


60
37·50
37·92


50
31·25
31·60


40
25·00
25·28


30
18·75
18·96


20
12·50
12·64


under 18


per cent.


100
38·30
38·70


90
34·37
34·83


80
30·64
30·96


70
26·81
27·09


60
22·98
23·22


50
19·15
19·35


40
15·32
15·48


30
11·49
11·61


20
7·66
7·74


Maximum life gratuity
4,150·00
4,200·00


Unemployability Supplement plus where appropriate an increase for early incapacity
38·30
38·70


higher rate
8·05
8·15


middle rate
5·10
5·20


lower rate
2·55
2·60


Adult dependant increase
23·00
23·25


Child dependant increase
8·05
8·05


Maximum special hardship allowance
25·00
25·28


Constant attendance allowance normal maximum
25·00
25·30


part-time rate
12·50
12·65


intermediate rate
37·50
37·95


exceptional rate
50·00
50·60


Exceptionally severe disablement allowance
25·00
25·30


Invalid Care Allowance
23·00
23·25


Increase for adult dependant
13·75
13·90


Invalidity Benefit


Invalidity pension
38·30
38·70


Invalidity allowance


higher rate
8·05
8·15


middle rate
5·10
5·20


lower rate
2·55
2·60


Maternity Benefit


Maternity Allowance


adult single full rate
29·15
29·45


adult dependant full rate
18·00
18·20


adult single three-quarter rate
21·86
22·09


adult dependant three-quarter rate
13·50
13·65


adult single half rate
14·58
14·73


adult dependant half rate
9·00
9·10


Maternity Grant
25·00
25·00


Mobility Allowance
21·40
21·65







Old rates
New rates


One Parent Benefit
4·55
4·60


Pneumoconiosis, Byssinosis, Workman's Compensation and Other Schemes


Major incapacity allowance (maximum) and allowance for total disablement
62·50
63·20


partial disablement allowance
23·00
23·25


Unemployability supplement; plus where appropriate increases for early incapacity
38·30
38·70


higher rate
8·05
8·15


middle rate
5·10
5·20


lower rate
2·55
2·60


Constant attendance allowance normal maximum rate
25·00
25·30


part-time rate
12·50
12·65


intermediate rate
37·50
37·95


exceptional rate
50·00
50·60


Exceptionably severe disablement allowance
25·00
25·30


Lesser incapacity allowance (maximum)
23·00
23·25


—based on loss of earnings of over
30·60
30·95


Retirement Pension


category A or B—on own insurance
38·30
38·70


category B (lower)—spouse's insurance
23·00
23·25


category C or D—non-contributory
23·00
23·25


category C (lower)—non-contributory
13·75
13·90


graduated retirement benefit (unit)
0·05
0·05


increments to basic and additional pension, guaranteed minimum pension, and graduated retirement benefit
increased by (1·1 per cent.)



(also paid with widows' and invalidity benefits)


addition for over 80's
0·25
0·25


Severe Disablement Allowance
23·00
23·25


increase for adult dependant
13·75
13·90


Sickness Benefit


over pension age single rate
36·65
37·05


increase for adult dependant
22·00
22·25


under pension age single full rate
29·15
29·45


adult dependant full rate
18·00
18·20


single three quarters rate
21·86
22·09


adult dependant three quarters rate
13·50
13·65


single half rate
14·58
14·73


adult dependant half rate
9·00
9·10


Supplementary Benefit


Scale rates ordinary rates


single householder
29·50
29·80


couple
47·85
48·40


non-householder 18 or over
23·60
23·85


non-householder 16–17
18·20
18·40


long-term rates single householder
37·50
37·90


couple
60·00
60·65


non-householder 18 or over
30·00
30·35


non-householder 16–17
23·00
23·25






Old rates
New rates


dependent children over 18
23·60
23·85


16–17
18·20
18·40


11–15
15·10
15·30


under 11
10·10
10·20


Board and lodging personal expenses: short term


single
9·70
9·80


married
19·40
19·60


personal expenses: long-term


single
10·85
10·95


married
21·70
21·90


personal expenses: dependants


18 and over
9·70
9·80


16–17
5·85
5·90


11–15
5·00
5·05


under 11
3·25
3·30


Maximum special increase in board and lodging


single person
17·30
17·50


married couple
34·60
35·00


Personal expenses


for claimants in private and voluntary residential and nursing homes
8·95
9·05


for claimants in re-establishment centres
9·85
9·95


for claimants in resettlement units
7·50
7·60


for claimants in hospital and local authority accommodation
7·65
7·75


for claimants in the Polish home Ilford Park
10·85
10·95


Additional requirements Heating additions (including age-related heating additions)


higher rate
5·45
5·55


lower rate
2·20
2·20


Central heating additions


higher rate
4·40
4·40


lower rate
2·20
2·20


Estate rate heating additions


higher rate
8·80
8·80


lower rate
4·40
4·40


Special dietary additions


lower rate
1·60
1·60


higher rate
3·70
3·70


haemodialysis rate
10·65
10·65


Blind addition
1·25
1·25


Over 80's addition
·25
·25


Laundry cost deduction
·55
·55


Addition for extra bath
·30
·30


Housing costs Reduction for non-dependants aged 18 to pension age, and not on supplementary benefit, YTS nor qualifying for modified deductions after 56 days
7·80
7·80


of pension age or over 21 and on supplementary benefit or qualifying for modified deduction after 56 days*
2·80
2·80


non-householder rent addition
3·90
3·90







Old rates
New rates


repairs and insurance allowance
1·85
1·85


Capital Limits


For reciept of Supplementary benefit
3,000·00
3,000·00


for single payments and related items
500·00
500·00


for interest on loans for repairs and improvements
500·00
500·00


lower rate voluntary unemployment deductions
100·00
100·00


Other limits


expenses on starting work religious requirements
35·00
35·00


for funerals
75·00
75·00


for repairs
325·00
325·00


Earnings disregard
£4 and in the case of single parents half the next £16


Deductions for direct payments fuel direct


5% rate
1·50
1·50


10% rate
2·95
3·00


housing costs direct
1·50
1·50


Reduction in benefit for strikers
17·00
17·00


Unemployment Benefit


Claimant over pension age


single rate
38·30
38·70


increase for adult dependant
23·00
23·25


Under pension age


single full rate
30·45
30·80


increase for adult dependant
18·80
19·00


single three-quarters rate
22·84
23·10


adult dependant three-quarters rate
14·10
14·24


single half rate
15·23
15·40


adult dependant half rate
9·40
9·50


War Pensions


Disablement pension private or equivalent (100 per cent.)
62·50
63·20


officer (100 per cent.) (£ per annum)
3,259·00
3,295·00


Age allowances


40 per cent. to 50 per cent.
4·35
4·40


over 50 per cent. but not over 70 per cent.
6·80
6·85


over 70 per cent. but not over 90 per cent.
9·75
9·85


over 90 per cent
13·60
13·70


Disablement gratuity specified minor injury
4,150·00
4,200·00


unspecified minor injury
2,282·50
2,310·00


Unemployability allowance


personal allowance
40·65
41·10


increase for adult dependant
23·00
23·25


increase for each child
8·05
8·05


Invalidity allowances higher rate
8·05
8·15


middle rate
5·10
5·20


lower rate
2·55
2·60


Constant attendance allowance


normal maximum rate
25·00
25·30


part-time rate
12·50
12·65


intermediate rate
37·50
37·95


exceptionable rate
50·00
50·60






Old rates
New rates


Comforts allowance


higher rate
10·80
10·90


lower rate
5·40
5·45


Mobility supplement
23·80
24·05


Allowance for lowered standard of occupation (maximum)
25·00
25·28


Exceptionally severe disablement allowance
25·00
25·30


Severe disablement occupational allowance
12·50
12·65


Clothing allowance


higher rate (per annum)
85·00
86·00


lower rate (per annum)
54·00
55·00


Education allowance (per annum)
120·00
120·00


War widows' pension standard rate for widow of private
49·80
50·30


childless widow under 40
11·49
11·61


widows' age allowance


age 65 to 69
5·35
5·40


age 70 to 79
10·70
10·80


age 80 and over
13·40
13·55


war widow's child addition
11·55
11·55


addition for motherless or fatherless child
12·60
12·60


Unmarried dependant living as wife
47·75
48·25


Rent allowance (maximum)
18·95
19·15


Adult orphan's pension
38·30
38·70


Widower's pension (maximum)
49·80
50·30


Widow's Benefit


Widows' allowance
53·60
54·20


Widowed mothers' allowance
38·30
38·70


Widows' pension


standard rate
38·30
38·70


Non-contributory category C'
23·00
23·25


Age-related widows' pension standard rate age 49
35·62
35·99


age 48
32·94
33·28


age 47
30·26
30·57


age 46
27·58
27·86


age 45
24·90
25·16


age 44
22·21
22·45


age 43
19·53
19·74


age 42
16·85
17·03


age 41
14·17
14·32


age 40
11·49
11·61


Non-contributory category C


age 49
21·39
21·62


age 48
19·78
20·00


age 47
18·17
18·37


age 46
16·56
16·74


age 45
14·95
15·11


age 44
13·34
13·49


age 43
11·73
11·86


age 42
10·12
10·23


age 41
8·51
8·60


age 40
6·90
6·98

* From 28 July 1986 this will read "aged 25 or more for new cases".

† Rate to be increased in September.

BILL PRESENTED

COMMON OWNERSHIP OF LAND

Mr. Tony Benn, supported by Mr. Tony Banks, Mr. Gerald Bermingham, Mr. Dennis Canavan, Mr. Eric S. Heffer, Mr. Terry Fields, Mr. Martin Flannery, Miss Joan Maynard, Mr. Bob McTaggart, Mr. Max Madden, Mr. Allan Roberts and Mr. Dennis Skinner, presented a Bill to restore to the British people their heritage in the ownership of land: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed [Bill [84.].

Children in Care

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Peter Lloyd.]

Mrs. Renée Short: I am sure that all members of the Select Committee on Social Services are glad to have an opportunity to debate, even for a short time, the report that it produced on children in care. The Committee had the benefit of the Government's reply and of the Government's working party on the legal issues. A good deal of evidence has therefore been collected together.
I thank all those who helped the Select Committee in its inquiry into the problems of children in care. The inquiry began in November 1982, which seems aeons ago, but it was interrupted by the general election. In 1983 the Committee decided to pick up the threads again and to complete its report, which was presented to the House in November 1984. The Committee is especially grateful to all the professional and voluntary organisations that gave evidence to it. The Committee is also especially grateful to the local authorities, including two in Scotland. They showed the Committee what they are doing in caring for deprived children who are sometimes delinquent. We are also grateful to those who develop the training of social workers in this difficult and sensitive work.
We learnt much from our visit to Denmark and Holland. We are also grateful to our three specialist advisers who have great experience in social work, administration and research and in the massive intricacies of the law.
Caring for children who are separated from their families is expensive. In 1981–82 we spent £370 million, mostly on residential homes, hostels, and boarding out. It costs £137 a week to keep a child in a community home, £123 a week in a voluntary home and £197 a week in residential accommodation, whereas fostering costs between £60 and £70 a week. We must be sure that we are right when deciding what we are to do to help a child in difficulty.
When we began our inquiry there was a debate going on about the rights of children and of parents. Now it is even more urgent to deal with the many shortcomings that were highlighted recently in the tragic Beckford case. Children in care are not obviously different from others of their age. A small minority might be in trouble for truancy, for example — often the first sign of difficulty in a family. Generally, the parents or other adults are in most need of help in dealing with a child who has difficulties.
We found that 8,400 children are in care because of parental neglect or abuse, 11,200 because their single parents cannot cope, 8,000 because of unsatisfactory home conditions, 5,700 because of parental illness and 3,200 because they have been orphaned or abandoned. Not all the children require long-term care.
Children in care are the victims. They are in care because the care system is designed to protect children against adult society, not to protect society against children. Although the state can never be a substitute for good parents and the good, loving home, it has an overriding responsibility to protect children when parenthood breaks down, for whatever reason.
The Committee accepts that parents and the family have rights and that they should be involved in the process of


care, especially if the break-up of the family can be prevented. However, when the family cannot provide for the child, for whatever reason, the state must intervene. Poverty and unemployment increase the risks of marital breakdown and, therefore, the risk of juvenile delinquency. Many children in care come from families on supplementary benefit who live in poor housing, or from families with too many children. We tend to forget the appalling strain on mothers, especially mothers bringing up children singlehanded. Children from prosperous families are also in care. We must not forget that most children from deprived families are well cared for by their families. We must keep the issue in perspective.
Local authorities are closing down many of their community health and education facilities and their residential homes, so fostering has increased. The number of interim care orders has increased, as have remands into care and matrimonial care orders. That means that the courts have an increasing role in child care.
Our report covers some specific areas which need specific Government action. It makes a number of recommendations for local authorities about the large number of placements experienced by some children. Sometimes they must move within weeks or months from one foster home to another—perhaps for good reasons—but that can be unsettling and set a child back at school. Our report recommends that children attend their reviews where possible so that they are involved in the decisions made about them. We recommended that local authorities encourage foster parent groups. It is important to bring foster parents together so that they can discuss their mutual problems and perhaps exchange good ideas
We say that the inspectorate should assess the way in which local authorities monitor their policies and practices so that good ideas can be passed between authorities. We say that the Department should keep itself well informed about developments so that if necessary other Departments can become involved. Housing and education often need to be involved. While different avenues of research are being pursued, the more consultation across boundaries the better. When more than one Department is involved it is often difficult to bring together different groups of Ministers and civil servants. We hope that the Department will do its best.
We should like to know what progress has been made in recruiting black foster parents. We found that to be a serious gap, according to the evidence taken in the House and as a result of our visits to various local authorities. There is a shortage of black foster parents and there are problems in persuading local authorities to provide support, training and housing accommodation for young people leaving care. It is not good enough that young people should be in care until they are 16 and then be pushed out into the big world. That is the time when they are most vulnerable and in need of help. We must consider the problem of finding accommodation and bringing the Departments together to ensure that provision is made for young people. Lack of care at that age is one of the reasons why so many young people drift to London, all too often with disastrous consequences.
We were encouraged to learn of the formation of the National Association for Young People in Care which gave evidence in the House. We met representatives from that organisation when we visited Bradford where its headquarters are. We found them to be stimulating, intelligent and caring. The association is run by young

people who have been in care. They deserve every support, including financial support, that the Department can give.
Is the Minister satisfied with the protection provided for handicapped children in care and leaving care? Such children are vulnerable. What progress has been made with our recommendation that a named medical adviser, should be responsible for the oversight of all children in care in each local authority area? What progress has been made towards establishing a permanent medical practice for children in care? If teachers, social workers, foster parents and others can get in touch with a medical adviser, that could provide the necessary co-ordination.
Doctors and teachers should have some understanding of the wide range of circumstances that can lead to a child being taken into care. That is important for teachers because they will receive children in care into their classrooms. The Blom-Cooper report into the tragic case of Jasmine Beckford shows that many important recommendations were not carried out in that case. That report was made some time after our report was published and showed that inadequately trained young people should not deal with such cases.
We urge the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work to take on board our recommendations about training its students. We urge it to finalise its proposals for the better training of social workers generally, who are expected to carry a very considerable responsibility. We do not underestimate the burdens that social workers, particularly young ones, are expected to shoulder. They carry considerable responsibility for widely disadvantaged groups, and their training should therefore be as adequate, careful and conscientious as possible.
We recommended that the training period should be for three years. It is clear that we have been expecting too much of young, inadequately trained men and women who are very keen to do social work but who have not been adequately prepared. We must extend the training course and improve its content.
I hope that the Minister will have some contact with the central council and will be able to give us some information about that. It is essential for directors of social service departments to provide the support and supervision that young social workers need. In recent cases it has been clear that that has not been provided.
I remind the House that we are still awaiting the Lord Chancellor's proposals, following our recommendations which arose from our visits to Scotland and Denmark, for the setting up of family courts. We saw admirable examples of what can be done in an informal atmosphere to help young people in difficulties, and their families, to deal with their problems. That may not necessitate taking the child away from home. The informal atmosphere that we saw is a great improvement on what can sometimes be a rather adversarial situation in juvenile courts in England. We have much to do to enable the legal side of the inquiries to function more effectively.
Before coming to the House I had some experience as a magistrate and sat on the juvenile bench. During our inquiry I visited three juvenile benches—two in London and one in my constituency—to see whether practice had changed. I was very depressed to find that it had not. The presence of uniformed policemen in the court, the magistrates sitting on a dais separated from the witnesses and the completely bewildered parents, guardians or


whoever is representing the young person, makes for a very difficult atmosphere. There is no real heart-to-heart conversation, which is necessary if one is trying to find out from a young person what motivated him or her to steal a car or to try to bump a policeman on the head.
We are waiting anxiously for the Lord Chancellor's proposals. We have had the advantage of the review of child care law, which made interesting reading, but it is for the Lord Chancellor's proposals that we are waiting. I hope that this debate will stimulate all of the organisations that are working in this area of social care and that we shall be able to give them, through the decisions made by the Department, all of the help that they obviously need.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Ray Whitney): I am very happy to follow the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short) and to congratulate her on her personal contribution in these matters. I also congratulate her colleagues on the Select Committee, who have examined this vital topic. It is of the greatest parliamentary and public concern, as recent debates have shown. I refer to the debate initiated by the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) and the Second Reading of the private Member's Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Mr. Walters) a couple of weeks ago.
The Government fully share the anxiety about these matters, which is due to some extent to the steady and depressing succession of child abuse cases that have come to light. It is not possible to make with any confidence any assertion about whether that phenomenon represents a serious rise in the incidence of child abuse or whether such cases are now detected and reported more frequently.
I remind the House that it is no coincidence that the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which does such good work and of whose Committee my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) is a member, is more than a century old. This is by no means a new problem. There can be no disagreement, however, about our having to do anything to reduce or, as far as possible, eliminate this horrifying cancer in our society.
We must be careful not to over-react to any headline. My colleagues and I will continue to pay tribute to the thousands of unreported successes of social workers and other professionals. They achieve a great deal in extremely difficult circumstances. The Government are not content, however, with present circumstances. As the hon. Lady said, we have responded in Cmnd. 9298 to the Select Committee's report, which we greatly welcome. It made a valuable contribution in an area which is a matter of great public concern, which is complex and sensitive and in which fashions change. Indeed, fashions conflict and there is most certainly no one simple clear solution.
The Select Committee's report covered a great deal of ground. It made no fewer than 108 recommendations and reached 42 conclusions. We tried to respond positively. We also covered much of the ground in the triennial report for 1982–84, which was published last December under the Child Care Act 1980. It, too, is available to hon. Members.
In all of our debates in this House, in all the guidances and consultations which issue from our Department, in the flood of articles in the general media and in the professional journals, in all the deliberations of the courts, our objective must always be to find practical ways in which to help children who may be in need or even in danger. Whatever may be the structure of the court system, the state of the law, the level of liaison and control of all the various agencies involved, in the end, the effectiveness of that whole system must rest to a very large extent on how one adult can work with one child and his family.
We must ensure that he or she has the best and most relevant training for that task and the best possible support from the appropriate services. As the Select Committee states in paragraph 27 of its report, there is a
crying need for improved liaison between the many statutory agencies involved.
That observation and passages in a number of the other sections of the report highlight a crucial message which also emerges clearly from Mr. Louis Blom-Cooper's inquiry into the Jasmine Beckford case and the reports of other child abuse tragedies. That message emphasises the importance of the role and responsibilities of the elected members of local authorities to see that there are satisfactory arrangements for discharging their child-care responsibilities and that in practice they work as intended.
The local authorities are at a critical point in the whole system. They must ensure that the right staff are selected for this very difficult work and that the staff are given the appropriate training. They must ensure that the social services departments are able to work harmoniously and productively with other departments such as education and housing, and that there is good co-operation at the local level—and I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East about the importance of co-operation and liaison at the national level—but even when co-operation is achieved at the central level, it may not be at the local level.
It is essential, therefore, that there is co-operation at the local level between the local authority and the other agencies involved in the care of children. It is through the elected members of local authorities that the deep public concern about child-care issues can be given its most effective and immediate expression.
In central Government, the responsibility must be to provide the framework in which the local authority and other services can meet the challenges confronting them. One element must, of course, be our responsibility to provide financial resources and we are all aware of the difficulties of funding local government expenditure in the face of mounting pressures and the overriding need for national financial restraint. Against that background, I believe it is encouraging to note that since 1979 expenditure on the personal social services has grown in cost terms by over 19 per cent. and that this year local authorities have again budgeted to provide for expenditure at another record level.
Another area of central responsibility relates to training, and we fully recognise the importance of training and the emphasis, interest and attention on the adequate training of social workers is increasing. The Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work, as the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East noted, is very active. It is the independent statutory body


responsible for the approval of training programmes and courses, and resources for that work come from a variety of sectors.
The council's overall expenditure has increased from £7·8 million in 1982–83 to £8·7 million in 1984–85. There has been an increase in the number of social workers and, together with the whole House and the Select Committee, I have been glad to note and welcome the fact that the number of trained social workers has been rising steadily and now stands at over 80 per cent. of the total.
As the hon. Lady said, the council has put forward new proposals for the training of social workers. These are being studied by all concerned, including the Department. We shall closely watch the results of the consultation which the council is conducting with the training institutions, professional bodies, employers and other central Government Departments to determine what the implications would be and how far they are feasible.
The Department is playing a full part in the council's consultations on which the council is to report by the middle of 1986.

Mr. Charles Kennedy: I acknowledge the points made by the Minister, but it sounds from his description as if we cannot expect anything positive to happen quickly. What timescale does the Minister's Department envisage for the consultation processes and decisions to take effect?
The hon. Gentleman spoke about the increased expenditure, but over the timescale he mentioned it is arguable, when set in the context of the Government's other social policy, whether that constitutes an increase. The Minister must recognise that, as with the Health Service, the social workers' morale is extremely low. Social workers feel that they are not held in any significant regard by the Government. That is the feeling, but I cannot detect anything in the procedure which the Minister has just outlined which will reverse that fundamental problem.

Mr. Whitney: After talking to a great many social workers over the past few months, I found that they are conscious that they have been fully supported by the Government from the Dispatch Box and elsewhere, during what has been a very difficult time given the horror cases that have been in newspaper headlines.
The Government, of course, are looking for better training. We all recognise the need for that, but that is an area where we must move with due care, taking full account of the consultative processes. We are fully committed to that and I repeat that we welcome and certainly think that it is a matter, not for complacency, but at least for some degree of pleasure, that the number of trained social workers has steadily increased and is now more than 80 per cent. of the total. I hope that the hon. Member for Ross, Cromarty and Skye (Mr. Kennedy) would not want us to go helter-skelter into a reorganisation of this fundamental and important area. That would be misguided.
The most important of all the Department's roles is to promote the highest standards of practice in all aspects of social work and to ensure that those practices are understood and applied throughout the country. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East mentioned that point. Much of that responsibility rests with the Department's social services inspectorate, an organisation

that was formed last April and that has already made a significant contribution in a difficult field, and I pay a warm tribute to what it has achieved so far.
The inspectorate will continue to be as active as it has been in many areas. Last week, for example, it published a report of an inspection it completed of 149 community homes in 29 English local authorities. These homes, as the House will understand, have been going through a particularly difficult time of change. As child-care policies have developed in recent years, a strong emphasis has emerged on reducing the amount of residential provision and the length of time that children spend in it. This has also meant that the homes are being used by those children who need the most concentrated and skilled attention.
The report makes positive recommendations for improvement in a number of areas. For example, it calls for improvements in the integration of field work and residential care staff and closer collaboration between homes and educational and employment services. Again the hon. Lady and I would agree on the need for improvements to continue in that area. Copies of the report, which are availabe in the Library, have been sent to all directors of social services and I am quite sure that they will provide welcome guidance in a difficult area.
Other areas where work by the social services inspectorate is in the pipeline include reports on assessment and supervision in child abuse cases and local authority practice on the provision of access to children in care and in the taking of parental rights resolutions—resolutions by which local authorities can take over all the parental rights and duties for a child in voluntary care. The inspectorate will also be looking closely at the operation of family centres, as recommended by the Select Committee, and on the scope and quality of planning for children in care.
As I said earlier, good social work with children depends on the quality of practical decision making and that is an area in which a number of major research projects have just been completed. The Select Committee recognised the need for research into the development of good social work practice and for the findings of such research to be properly disseminated. We entirely share that view and that is why, with the help of the group of practitioners, we have prepared a document which provides an overview of the findings of these projects and includes summaries of research reports.
The publication is entitled "Social Work Decisions in Child Care" and contains much material which, I believe, will be very helpful to local authorities, other statutory bodies and, above all, practitioners. Again, a copy has been placed in the Library. Important messages from the research include the need for social workers to develop and improve preventive services to keep families together; to avoid over-concentration on the actual point of admission to care; and to take a more positive approach to planning purposefully for children in care, either for return to their family or long-term alternative care. To achieve these objectives agencies need to set clear policy guidelines for staff based on clearer views about their objectives and purposes of care.

Mr. Anthony Steen: I welcome all that my hon. Friend is saying. However, does he agree that one of the great problems is that the concept of care often does not square with the pressures that social workers experience when living and working in urban areas? The


turnover of social workers in children's homes often leaves much to be desired and subjects children in so-called care to added strain.

Mr. Whitney: I am sure that my hon. Friend has a valid point. It is one that should be noted by all the local authorities concerned. My hon. Friend will be aware that the move is away from residential care wherever possible, and I hope that it will continue. We hope to work on the need for improved training of workers in residential-care homes.
It is important that we disseminate "Social Work Decisions in Child Care". As a first step, we organised a national seminar on 10 January, which I was privileged to initiate. We were delighted to welcome to that seminar a number of chairmen of social services committees, other elected members and a number of chief officers. This will be followed by a series of regional seminars mounted by the social services inspectorate. We have also commissioned a training package that is based on the findings of the research so that all the benefits can be transmitted quickly to managers and practitioners throughout the country.
I have tried to highlight some of the areas where we are seeking to give practical help to those who have direct responsibilities in this sensitive area. It is not an exhaustive list and there is more to come in a number of areas—for example, our response to Mr. Louis Blom-Cooper's important report on the Jasmine Beckford case.
I should not conclude before referring to two other areas for which the Government and all of us in Parliament must be responsible, and these are the legal and judicial systems operating in relation to children in care.
One of the Select Committee's main concerns was, justifiably, the confused state of the law on the care and protection of children. The Committee commented on the harmful effect of the piecemeal implementation of the Children Act 1975, which I am glad to say is now fully implemented with the exception of a statutory adoption service. The Government responded quickly to the Committee's recommendation for an urgent and speedy review, and a team started work on this major task within two months of the Select Committee's report. It produced a thorough and detailed report to Ministers with commendable speed, given the complexity of the area. The report was published early in October 1985 as a consultation document, and comments were sought by mid-January. We have received over 180 comments which have generally been favourable. We are now in the process of considering this response and taking decisions on what changes need to be made in the law. I hope that it will not be too long before it will be possible to bring proposals before the House.
In fact, many of the report's recommendations simply encapsulate what is already good practice in the best authorities and in the voluntary organisations. In these areas, there is no need for other authorities to wait for changes in the law, which inevitably take time to go through the proper and necessary constitutional arrangements. Better practice can and should be achieved now. But other areas will have to await legislative change, and I would offer the House three examples which illustrate the main themes of the report.
First, given the existing state of the law, it can at present be difficult to take a child into care where serious harm is thought likely in the future. The working party therefore recommended changes so that children can be committed to care more easily by reference to a magistrates' court where substantial harm is thought likely. The working party has also managed to meet one of the Select Committee's main concerns by bringing into line the different legal grounds for care which exist in different legal processes.
Secondly, the working party followed the Select Committee, and indeed the Beckford report, in recommending better safeguards to ensure that removal of a child to care is properly and thoroughly tested by a court and that the parents should have an early opportunity to put their case even if it is not, in the event, accepted. For example, it proposes that there should continue to be power for a magistrate to make an emergency order removing a child from home without the parents necessarily being present to challenge it. But these orders should last for only up to eight days before being carefully examined by a court rather than 28 days at present. This is in line with the Select Committee's report, although I note Mr. Blom-Cooper's report has suggested that these orders should last only 72 hours. We shall need to consider which approach gives the better protection to children, both from harm from their parents and from arbitrary and unjustified removal.
Thirdly, the majority of children enter care not as a result of being abused or neglected, nor because they have offended. The parents of many children simply find themselves unable to cope, generally for a short period as a result of a parent's illness, sometimes for extended periods. As a result, they themselves ask for a child to be taken into care. This includes parents of handicapped children, who can make particularly stressful demands. The working party recommended that we should try to get away from the old stigma of "care" and develop new models of "respite care" to give families a break from caring for a child and of "shared care" where parents share the responsibility of looking after their children with the local authority. This will also ensure in law that any handicapped child living away from home receives the careful supervision and review which the Select Committee recommended.
The House will also have noted that simultaneously with the review of child care law we embarked last October on a consultation on day care legislation, the Nurseries and Child-Minders Regulation Act 1948, and I am glad to say that here, too, we have had a similar volume of helpful responses.
The working party on the reform of child care law emphasised that the changes it proposed would be able to fit either into the present court system or into any future family court system, and the Select Committee itself said that the review of the law should fall short of a fundamental examination of family courts, which must of necessity take longer.
However, there is a powerful and increasing demand for the creation of a family court system, and the Select Committee recommended that the Government should provide the House with a detailed and fully costed scheme for the establishment of such a system. Accordingly the Government set up the family court review to consider the feasibility of a unified family court. That team, which was made up of officials from the Lord Chancellor's


Department, the Home Office, the Treasury and my own Department, will be producing a consultation paper around Easter which will set out the main options for such a court. I share the regret that it has taken the review such a long time to produce a paper, but I hope that the House will recognise the inherent difficulty and complexity of devising a family court which would not only take on jurisdiction in care proceedings but in all other family and domestic proceedings as well.
Many questions arise from the contemplation of such a major step in an area as complicated and sensitive as the administration of justice. There are questions, for example, on the best use of judicial manpower. Would it be appropriate to require judges to specialise only in family law cases? Are lay magistrates to continue to play a role in this field? How are the very different jurisdictions of a county court registrar in a divorce court and the lay magistrates in the domestic court to be brought within a single unified jurisdiction? There are questions of resources and of accommodation. And what would the family court provide for the family which is involved in the multiplicity of court proceedings? To what extent are criticisms of the present court structure really criticisms of a very complex system of law?
I do not have the answers to these questions, but it is certainly not my intention in raising them to suggest that answers cannot be found. I merely wish to make the point that those who say that family courts could be established overnight have probably failed to consider the practicability of the form of family court that they have in mind. I hope that the forthcoming consultation document will focus attention on the many questions involved, and that it will also point the way to the answers which must be found if family courts are to fulfil the hopes now held by so many people about the positive contribution they could make to the handling of the problems of children in care.
I have spoken at length about some of the things the Government are doing in this crucial area. I shall listen to the contributions of all hon. Members during the debate. The care of our children is not just a matter for Parliament and the Government or for local authorities and social workers. It is a matter for each and every one of us as parents, as neighbours and as individuals. Children brought into care represent a challenge to society—all too often a failure of society — that all of us must recognise and deal with.

Ms. Harriet Harman: I should like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short) for the important contribution made by the report of her Committee. One of the most valuable aspects of the Select Committee report was the emphasis on the need to reduce the number of children coming into care. The Government have not responded to that emphasis and that is the Government's most serious failing. Children that are well housed and have a decent income and go to nursery schools are unlikely to find themselves in care.
The Select Committee rightly emphasised the well established link between poverty and reception into care. Not all children of the poor are, in care, but most of the children who are are children of the poor. Since the report was written, there has been a relentless increase in unemployment, in the number of people claiming supplementary benefit, and in the number of people who

are forced to claim single payments. That means an increase in the number of families where children are at risk because of a combination of poverty and other problems.
The Government's response seems to be that families are better off than they were and long scale rates for unemployed families with children are too expensive. The Government are taking steps that will increase the financial problems of the very families that are already vulnerable. For example, child benefit is a major bulwark against poverty. It is paid to the person who is responsible for feeding and clothing the children, which is usually the mother, and it is used for the purpose intended. It is a universal benefit and does not suffer from the problem of other benefits of a low take-up. The Government have already undermined child benefit by not increasing it last November in line with the rate of inflation. While the Government have not abolished it altogether, I fear they are allowing it to fade away. There is unanimous hostility to the Government's failure to keep child benefit up as a meaningful contribution to the cost of upkeep of a child. There is hostility even from the Government's own Conservative women's organisations.

Mr. Whitney: Would the hon. Lady not agree that the Government's proposals for social security reform and especially for the reform of family credit and income support that concentrates help on the poorest families is the right way to go? Should we not do that rather than continually and steadily spread the family benefit across the board? The statement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has uprated above the rate of inflation, but the major thrust of our social security review with the important proposals on family credit and income support is directed towards those members of the population with whom the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) and all of us are concerned.

Ms. Harman: The Minister has clearly revealed his hostility to the universality of child benefit. That is precisely why child benefit is so important. The other advantage of child benefit is that it is paid to the person looking after the child, whether or not that person is a wage earner. A further threat to low income families is the proposal in the Social Security Bill that instead of single payments there is a proposal for a social fund. That will plunge tens of thousands of families into further debt because, instead of cash grants for necessary items, families will have to seek payments in the form of loans that are later repayable to the DHSS by way of weekly deductions from the new income support.
There are already 300,000 claimants with direct deductions for fuel payments that amount to about 10 per cent. of their supplementary benefit. This proposal is likely to increase indebtedness, especially among those identified as vulnerable in the Select Committee's report, that is, children of single parents and children of the unemployed. A further threat is the ending of the work expenses disregard for calculating income support. Apparently, work expenses are disregarded when assessing income for the purposes of calculating supplementary benefit. One of the major work expenses, especially for a lone parent. is child care. Because of the drastic shortage of day nurseries and nursery education and the lack of local authority-sponsored child minder places, most single parents have to pay for child care provision while they are at work.


If a lone parent in part-time work cannot get child care expenses of, say, £20 a week disregarded, that person will become ineligible for supplementary benefit. That means it will be no longer be worth while for that parent to work. That will arise if the Government's proposals go through and would mean an increase in the number of lone parent families where the parent in not working and suffering a combination of isolation and poverty.
The Select Committee not only identified money as being important in preventing families reaching a stage where children have to go into care but highlighted the importance of services. The Select Committee referred to children who are vulnerable out of school, that is, after school hours, in school holidays or during half term. There should be comprehensive provision for out of school care. Children with nothing to do during the school holidays, in half term and after school hours, instead of enjoying themselves, can end up in hospital or in the juvenile courts. Far from encouraging such out of school care the Government are inhibiting its development. Education authorities who might be the main source of such schemes are being told by the Government that they are indulging in spending sprees. Last year the Government cut £400,000 from the urban programme of holiday play schemes. Because of great protest about that, at the last minute the Government restored the money. But it was too late and sponsors of many of the schemes had to cut the length of time they operated or the number of children they were able to care for.
Pre-school care and education is important for all children. The first five years of life are vital for the mental and physical development of children, who blossom when they can play and learn with other children. As a means of preventing children coming into residential care, day care is crucial. In response to the Select Committee's anxiety about provision for the under-fives, the Government have the cheek to say that there has been an increase in day nursery places. I say to the Minister that that has been despite Government action, not because of it. The Government have been trying to reduce local authority spending and have branded as irresponsible councils that have increased spending to expand provision for the under-fives. The increase in day nursery places is attributable to those councils that have refused to bow down to the Government and have stoically defended and improved services in spite of the fact the Government have told them not to do that. The Government have even financially penalised them for doing so.
The list of authorities that make provision for the under-fives bears an uncanny resemblance to the list of authorities that the Government are ratecapping or heavily penalising. For example, at the top of the list for day nursery places for the under-fives are: Camden, Islington, Brent, Lambeth, Manchester, Hackney, Southwark, Liverpool, Greenwich, Lewisham, Haringey and Birmingham. According to the response to the Select Committee report, the Minister apparently thinks it is a responsible policy to provide day nursery places. Perhaps the Minister will tell that to his colleagues in the Department of the Environment and his Conservative colleagues in local councils, because a number of Conservative local authorities provide not a single day nursery place. They are: Cornwall, Warwickshire, West Sussex and Wiltshire. What about those caring Liberal

councillors? In the Isle of Wight — the Liberals' flagship, because it is the only authority where the Liberals have had control for a number of years, and where they can be judged on their record—there is not one single day nursery place. This is not because there are no children under five, but because the "caring" Liberals do not think it is important to provide parents with the choice of provisions.

Mrs. Edwina Currie: Far be it from me to defend Liberal councils or, indeed, any other kinds of council, except good Conservative ones, but is the hon. Lady really saying that the only form of child care is day nursery provisions provided by the paid staff of a local authority? What about play groups, child minders, voluntary care and all the other people who look after children? Many of them do not require any assistance and would not accept it from the state.

Ms Harman: The hon. Lady was not listening. I said that it was important for local authorities to provide day nursery places so that there is a choice of provision based on what suits the child and what suits the parent. That is what I always say. I said that just as the hon. Lady rose but she was too quick to intervene.
I believe that a statutory duty should be imposed on local authorities to make them take account of the needs of children under five and make available a range of provisions to meet those needs. The Government must ensure that they match with resources the responsibilities of councils to children under five in their area. Not only is this an important step in preventing children from coming into care but it gives all parents what they want—a comprehensive range of services so that they can choose the services that meet the needs of their families.
The Government appear in their response to endorse the Select Committee's correct concern to improve child minding and, in particular, to increase legislation. The Government talk about local authorities "encouraging registration" by making support for child minders available. This will be greeted with hollow laughter from those authorities which are trying to improve the services available to child minders and which are told, as a result, by the Department of the Environment that they are reckless overspenders.
Under the under-fives initiative fund, the National Childminding Association set up three experimental schemes—in Trafford, Southwark and Stafford. Last week, I visited the excellent Trafford scheme and I know very well the work of the Southwark scheme. The schemes' aim was to give children who are minded, minders and parents a better deal by providing support services, training and information for minders, not least about how to recognise signs of child abuse, in case a child minder feels that a child in his or her care is being abused by its parent, and about what to do if his or her suspicions appear to have some basis.
All these schemes are coming to an end. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will respond to this point and tell us what will happen to the schemes. Unless they obtain finance from local authorities—which, courtesy of the Minister's colleagues in the Department of the Environment, already have their backs against the wall—they will disappear. The schemes were an experiment which has clearly worked. However, it is difficult for


councillors to take up this useful experiment and put it into practice — a practice that would benefit hundreds of thousands of children who are minded.
Perhaps the biggest threat to the child minding service comes from the Social Security Bill. I should like the Under-Secretary of State to respond specifically to this point. Two thirds of a child minder's fees are disregarded in assessing eligibility for supplementary benefit. It is not entirely clear, but it is feared by the National Childminding Association and many other organisations that the new social security framework will mean that all child minders' fees will be taken into account when assessing them for supplementary benefit and that they will therefore lose that two thirds disregard. That will mean that a large number of minders will become ineligible for supplementary benefit and, for many, it will mean that it is not worth their while working. Increasing their fees is not an option, not only because the women who are paying the fees are already low paid but because, with the implementation of the Social Security Bill, their position will be even worse because of the ending of the work expenses disregard.
Camden council has estimated that, if the earnings disregard for child minders is ended, it will lose up to 50 per cent. of its minders overnight. Will the Under-Secretary of State assure the House that child minders will not lose their two thirds disregard, as this will undermine one important plank of the provision for children under five?
The Select Committee asked the Government to examine and cost proposals for a family court. The case for a family court is overwhelming. Implementation of the proposals is long overdue. Current court procedures for dealing with children are complex, overlapping and lengthy. Our adversarial system, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East has said, is not always the best way of reaching the correct conclusion on a case. We have no inquisitorial arm for the courts as in the Scottish system. Magistrates and judges are inexpert in these matters because they lack specific training and experience with respect to child care because they deal with a wide range of issues. It is therefore impossible for them to build up the expertise that such a complex aspect of law and public policy requires.
We should do well to remember what Mr. Blom-Cooper said about magistrates in the report on the Jasmine Beckford case. He said that they had been "utterly misguided", had "failed to protect" abused children and should be "publicly upbraided". Clearly, we need to demonstrate the inadequacies of the current system, but they are well known to the Government. Action should be taken. There is a definite demand for a family court.

Mr. Peter Thurnham: The hon. Lady called for action. I believe that in 1974 the Labour party's manifesto called for family courts but, when the Labour party came to power, it found all sorts of reasons not to take action.

Ms. Harman: This has been a long-running saga. It has run for far too long. The tune is now right for all vested interests to unleash their grip on whichever part of the system they are hanging on to. It is time for a bit of change and progress. The momentum and consensus behind the family courts issue is enormous. All the organisations involved agree on the need for family courts. There is a broad measure of agreement on the shape of that court.
The Government still have not provided their report on family courts. When may we expect that overdue report? This creates a problem, because the child care law review is nearing its end. The Select Committee's report provided the impetus to that review. There are many organisations whose support for the changes in the substantive law is conditional upon a change in the procedural law. It would be madness to jeopardise the consensus emerging on the substantive law changes by failing to get a move on and to set up family courts.
In a way, the subject of intermediate treatment parallels the child minders' support schemes. In 1983 the DHSS gave £15 million in finance for intermediate treatment. More than 90 schemes have been set up throughout England, providing 3,000 places. They have made a useful contribution by providing courts with an alternative to taking a child into care or imposing a custodial sentence. The money is running out, as the schemes were to continue for only two or three years. The Government have responded by extending the period to six months, but that merely postpones the evil day. The Challenge project in Durham, the Milestone project in Sunderland, the Community Alternative for Young Offenders project in Sandwell and several National Children's Home projects in Devon are under threat because their funding is about to end. I hope that we can have an assurance from the Government that those schemes, when they have taken the initiative of providing pump-priming funding, vial not disappear as a result of the enormous pressure on local government finance which the Department of the Environment has been exerting.
When reading the Government's response to the excellent Select Committee report one gets the feeling that the Department of Health and Social Security recognises what needs to be done but refuses to acknowledge it because it is afraid to do anything to undermine the Government's relentless drive towards public expenditure cuts. It is difficult to see how we can improve preventive measures and provision for children while they are in care while the DHSS acts like a sub-division of the Department of the Environment and both the DHSS and the Department of the Environment act like sub-divisions of the Treasury. The DHSS Ministers have abdicated their reponsibility for social services in favour of being an arm of the Government's brutal economic policies.

Mrs. Edwina Currie: The hon. Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) and I have crossed swords before on child care. I always think that it is rather sad that she seems to feel that children are a burden and that families have to be assisted by the state in all the ways that she has outlined. I think that most Conservative Members would say that most people have children because they want them and they should be encouraged to look after them by themselves as far as possible. The only other party point that I would make is that it is sad that the Labour party has largely seen fit to ignore this debate. For much of it the only other person on the Opposition Benches, Back or Front, has been the hon. Member of Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short) who is the distingushed Chairman of the Committee which produced the report.
The report was the first act of the Select Committee in the new parliamentary Session. Although I was a member of the Committee when it produced the report, I was not


a member when it did all the work. I would like to pay tribute to all those hon. Members in the previous Parliament who put in what must have been a staggering amount of work, going round the country and visiting other countries to see how child care policies worked. I am sorry that it is likely that I shall have to leave the Committee soon. I regard the work that I have done during the two years that I have spent on it as being among the most valuable things that I have been able to do in the House.
The report is first class with a wealth of excellent detailed work in it. It is a pity that it has taken nearly two years to get to the stage where we are able to debate it, but perhaps the Committee has done quite well in having had a recent debate on community care for the adult mentally ill and mentally handicapped. Much of the current interest in the subject is the result of recent child abuse cases. One could only wish that those feelings of shock and horror among the public, councillors and members of the responsible bodies, such as health authorities, which are aroused when they read the reports of cases in the newspapers were effective at the time they take the decisions which determine what level and what type of resources are available to prevent such cases.
Much of what I feel about such matters arises out of my service in Birmingham. In 1978 and 1979 we commissioned a major report to look at the child care we were providing in an authority which was not poor and which was not divided on political grounds over how to look after our 4,000 children in care. We found to our horror that at that time we were spending about £ 15 million each year to keep children in care and about £400,000 to keep children out of care. We had 104 children's homes, including nine residential nurseries, many of which were half empty. About 70 per cent. of the children we were looking after came from broken homes and we were shuffling those poor children around like brown paper parcels. As a result of that we changed the pattern of child care in Birmingham. I believe that it has stayed changed. The number of children in care is now below 2,000, so the figure has dropped by about half. My colleagues in Birmingham seem to be making a much better job of it than we did some years ago.
The report examines in detail two of the thorny problems of children in care. On the whole it steers a clear course between the extremes that are offered in the particular problems. I particularly want to direct my attention to two issues—when a child is in trouble, or is to be rehabilitated. Who should we favour, who should we believe and who should we give power to? Should we give power to the parents or the statutory worker, usually the social worker? The other main problem is how should we look after a child when it is in care. Should we aim for children's homes or fostering? Those are the broad arguments.
I shall deal first with the problem of the pattern of care. The report devotes a great deal of attention to that. We should recognise that vested interests are at work in that issue, particularly the National Union of Public Employees. I am not surprised. Why should it not be? If NUPE does not speak for its members I suspect that nobody else will.
Those in children's homes see themselves as offering a safe haven for children at risk, and very often they are

doing just that. However, they often fail to see the risks of putting children in homes — the risk of institutionalisation, not only of the children but of the people who work with them. They fail to see the tendency to treat children as brown paper parcels — shuffling children around. We discovered to our horror in Birmingham that the bulk of our homes were set up for short periods of care only. Each child made an average of six moves during their child care career with us, and many children were moved around 10 times or more. Many children set up the move as a means of controlling their environment. They would make themselves exceedingly awkward, get themselves moved and feel that they had managed to achieve something.
Many people in residential child care fail to prepare children for the outside world. That is not surprising when a child never sees a gas bill and thinks that food rolls up on a Monday morning in large refrigerated vans. Residential child care also fails to catch up with changes in the type of child and the type of need.
I have not seen the report of the inspectorate, but I should like to refer to an article by David Hencke in The Guardian which deals with that report on children in care. It points out that nearly four out of five residents in homes are now aged 13 or more, and half were first admitted to care after their twelfth birthday. Many of the comments that the inspectors made pointed out that the homes had become unsuitable:
'Adult-sized young people were sleeping in small beds and occasionally having to use wash basins and lavatories designed for young children."'
It is not only a matter of the physical environment of the home, but the people concerned have not been trained to look after what are no longer little children or babies but extremely difficult, disturbed and frequently dangerous adolescents. The child care provisions have been set up as if we were running orphanages, but well over 98 per cent. of those children have parents and we are not talking about orphanages at all.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: My hon. Friend has told the House that she was not on the Committee for the majority of its work, but came on to it when the Committee was reconstituted in the current Parliament. Is my hon. Friend aware that the association representing young people in care — the National Association of Young People in Care—gave us strong evidence to support the continuation of residential care homes. It believed that, with those homes being restructured, it was a very valuable facility for those young people who did not want fostering, were not prepared to be adopted and could not go back to their original homes. Will my hon. Friend confess that there are a number of young people who would wish to see residential care homes maintained for the future?

Mrs. Currie: Yes. With the greatest respect to those young people, I wonder how many of them have been influenced by foster parents to speak in favour of fostering. I am not aware of whether the Committee took any evidence at that time from foster children or whether there is an organisation for children who are being fostered, but I feel that the institutionalisation to which I referred can affect everyone concerned, including the children. I am not saying that we should close all children's homes. Perhaps my hon. Friend will allow me to continue and I shall reach the point with which I think he will agree.


I am concerned that residential care staff are often the Cinderella staff of social services departments, which are themselves the Cinderella departments of many local authorities. If we are to move from the staff being frequently untrained, unqualified and often very young, who think they will be looking after little babies and doing a lot of nappy changing but who find to their surprise that they are looking after great hulking teenagers who are in care because of some horror they have committed, we have to ensure that those residential care staff are properly trained, supported, advised and have the appropriate status in terms of the advice that they are able to offer. It always seems curious that it is social workers who feel so hard done by in all these discussions when it is residential child care staff who perhaps have some grievances.
The other extreme of what to do with children in care requires an answer as to whether we need children's homes at all. I think that we do, but I feel that we could make more progress using foster parents. In those local authorities which regard foster parents as a vital and valuable resource, over 50 per cent. or 70 per cent. of the children in their care may be out with foster parents. In that way I believe that children can experience normal home life, and they are offered some kind of model for their future. They come into a home in which rows are not resolved by somebody pulling out a kitchen knife, in which bills are paid and the electricity does not get cut off and in which children are treated with love and dignity and encouraged to treat other people in the same way.
Fostering requires a lot of strenuous effort, and it should not be regarded as a cheap option. It will not be possible to do without some form of residential accommodation especially for severely disabled children and for respite care for those families who might need some assistance from time to time.
The other major hassle to which the report devotes a great deal of attention is the balance between parental influence and the role of professional workers, particularly in the context of the court, but there are other aspects to the matter as well.
For some time there have been moves to take powers away from social workers and return them to the parents. Some of them have been resurrected recently in the case of Mrs. Gillick and the role of doctors vis-a-vis parents and children. I would dub that as the "parents know best" argument. I think that parents usually know best, and that is why I am all in favour of foster parents, but years of seeing what some parents do to their children, and the way in which some parents treat their children, and the way in which some parents have damaged and abused their children, as I saw over all those years in Birmingham, has led me to believe that there are occasions when other people know best. Indeed, sometimes even children know best. I know that it sounds like a cop out to say that we should look at each case on its merits, but that is really the only way.
What is wrong, and what annoys me, is when social workers are blamed by the media for the deaths of children in care. It is worth remembering that Tyra Henry was killed not by her social worker, but by her mother's lover, and that Jasmine Beckford was murdered not by any social worker or health visiter, but by her father. Whether we should regard the social workers as culpable in any way, the fact is that it is the murderers who are in prison, not the people employed by the local authority.
Just as good community policing requires officers who understand the local people and can gain their respect, that is true of social workers and care staff. We have a lot more social workers around. I understand that in 1978 there were 22,000 social workers on the books, and in 1984 there were 24,300, which is a substantial jump. However, I wonder whether, instead of just recruiting more social workers, instead of just looking at the input and the amounts of money that we spend on them, we should not look at the quality of what we are getting. I believe that we should recruit far more social workers from the ranks of mature people who have had families of their own and whose experience of life and child care should alert them when something is going wrong, instead of nice girls with philosophy degrees—often from other countries—from good homes where no one ever tells a lie, and whose understanding of some of the families that they are dealing with leaves a great deal to be desired.
I should like to make one last comment. All children in care are the results of failure. Most are the results of failure in the family. In the survey in Birmingham, which I mentioned earlier, in 1978, 70 per cent. of the children came from a broken home. I guess that if that survey were done again, we would find a much higher proportion, yet all those children had parents. Is it not about time that we thought again about putting together a family policy? My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said in a House of Commons written reply back in March 1983:
Improving family life is one of our principal objectives".—[Official Report, 3 March 1983; Vol. 38, c. 204.]
At the time there was a great deal of discussion about family policy, how to make it effective, and so on. Such thoughts go back to the most impeccable Socialist origins, in 1976, when in New Society Brian Jackson suggested a Minister for the family. I believe that the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) has called for a family policy. The all-party penal reform committee called for a Minister for the family. I suggest that it is about time that we had another look at that.
It is said sometimes that asking for a Minister for the family is rather simple-minded. I am a simple-minded soul, and I think it is worth while looking at whether we can, in a simple-minded way, emphasise once again that the family is important, and the collapse of the family is disastrous, particularly for the children concerned.
Other countries have a Minister for the family. For example, West Germany has something which I understand is called —slightly unfortunately -- the Ministry of Family Affairs. All that we have is something called the Study Commission on the Family, funded by the Department of Health and Social Security and the Social Science Research Council, which produces excellent reports that nobody ever reads and, as far as I can see, nobody ever acts on. We can see in the social security reviews that were published last year, and in the Social Security Bill, now in Standing Committee, of which I am a member, the result of not having a family policy or a review of family policy. We found that, contrary to public opinion, it was not pensioners who had become worse off, although everybody believed that, but families with children, whose position had worsened in recent years and nobody had noticed.
I should like to see a Minister for the family, and in the Department of Health and Social Security. Such a Minister could do four jobs. The first job should be to administer that part of the DHSS that supports family life—child


benefit, family income supplement and its future incarnations, with all the billions of pounds that are involved.
The second job should be to administer the funds for voluntary organisations that support the family. At the top of my list would be marriage guidance and family conciliation services. The Government's response to recommendation 10 in the report of the Select Committee on Social Services was a little mealy-mouthed. We could wait for ever to prove that those services are worthwhile. Meanwhile the number of divorces increases, the number of children affected by divorce increases, and more and more children are at risk. It is axiomatic that if we help to support good quality, experienced marriage guidance services with some money we might help to keep some marriages together and help some families.

Ms. Harman: I think that the hon. Lady is muddling up marriage guidance counselling, which is an attempt to resolve differences within a marriage and to keep marriages together, with conciliation services, which are about conciliating the partners on the breakdown of a marriage, to ensure that arguments about property, money and the children are kept to a minimum. The two are entirely different. The conciliation services are not for repairing broken marriages, but for minimising the damage that may be caused.

Mrs. Currie: I take the hon. Lady's point entirely. I should not muddle them up; I should help them both. I should particularly help voluntary organisations that are working in the field—not just in marriage guidance. I was involved with the family service units in Birmingham. A Minister for the family should pay more attention to such an organisation.
The third job that such a Minister could do would be to take responsibility for all those bits of legislation that affect the family. I have counted seven different major statutes since 1975 that affect children and the family. One tiny little bit was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State — the triennial report under the Children Act 1975, which has to come to the House. There is more than enough for a Minister to do there.
The fourth job should be to create and promulgate a family perspective, which has been called for repeatedly over the past 10 years, to liaise with other Departments so that the effect of legislative or fiscal action on the family can be highlighted, and so that priorities can be urged to put the family first—for example, the reform of taxation of the family. We have been promised a Green Paper; we have been promised action to assist families where the mother chooses to stay at home and look after the children. We should ensure that that happens. With somebody actually pushing the family perspective, we should make a lot of progress.
We shall never avoid some kinds of child abuse. There will always have to be some statutory intervention when things go wrong. Ultimately, the child has to look to the House and all the delegated responsibilities that we hand down to protect him, but I believe that by strengthening the family and by the other changes that I have suggested we could make a far better job of it.

Mr. Charles Kennedy: I am tempted to do so, but I shall not follow the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) too far down the line that she has been sketching out. When the hon. Lady described the range of issues with which a Minister for the family would deal and the breadth of responsibility which he would enjoy, it struck me just a little that we were hearing a delicate effort to sketch out a job description for herself. However, I leave it at that. The Minister is warned. There is a problem about proposing new Ministries. The Department of Employment tends to deal with rising unemployment, and the Minister responsible for housing tends to deal with an ever-more rapid decline in the quantity and quality of our housing stock, so if a Ministry responsible for the family were to follow the approach laid down by Ministers elsewhere, I hate to think what we would end up with. Beyond that, the hon. Lady raised a legitimate matter, in which she may have a legitimate interest.
Any discussion of children in care is clouded in the minds of the public by some of the horrific reports of child abuse last year. Yesterday, the Sunday Times said that after the enormous publicity following the horrific death of Jasmine Beckford and the subsequent public inquiry and report, there had been a significant increase in the reporting of child abuse. That was also reported in the social work magazine Community Care.
Whatever line we take on social policy in the broadest sense, I am sure that we all echo the approach adopted by the Minister when he said that, ultimately, the care of children cannot be a matter only for statutory or voluntary organisations, but must be a matter for us all. I do not want to go too far into the argument about the relationship between poverty, declining social opportunities, increasing social inequalities and the degree of incidence of care for children. However, when referring to that relationship the Select Committee report said:
Studies have shown that the majority of children in care come either from one-parent families or from families with an unemployed head of household—or both … Social work can however be expected to ensure that the full range of services provided by the state and others reach those most at risk.
The thrust of that observation is self-evident. It shows that those most at risk are often those in the most deprived circumstances. I shall not indulge in a great political harangue about that, as I have no time for such an approach. However, it is an important point that is worth bearing in mind.
In the Government's continuing consideration of children in care, I hope that they will remember the effects of their social security revisions. The announcement this afternoon of the consultative paper to the Social Security Advisory Committee on the future of single payments, and what appears to be a fairly drastic reduction in both the scope and level of single payments to families, cannot be isolated from the subject that we are debating.
Child benefit has already been discussed. I believe it to be a detrimental and retrograde step that family credit will be paid through the wage packet. Some provision should be made for family credit to go direct to the caring parent. It cannot be beyond the wit of the DHSS and those involved in bringing tax and benefits closer together to leave some scope for the benefit for the child to go direct


to the caring parent, which, as we know, is the mother in nine out of ten cases. Obviously the social security reviews and the incidence of deprivation cannot be overlooked.
The Minister rightly said that emphasis must be given to prevention. There is general consensus in the Select Committee report that more should be done to advance prevention as part of the general strategy. The AMA, in paragraph 32, accepted that preventive work was all too often an early casualty of financial pressures. That is an important point. For example, all too often joint funding projects—especially those involving the voluntary sector—are the first to suffer when a local authority's rate support grant is threatened, penalised or cut by the Government because of overspending commitments. That is especially relevant to the taper effect, as most of the burden of joint funding lies with local authorities. Similarly, the preventive aspects emphasised by the Government and the Select Committee, which would command full support, will be an early casualty when there are excessive financial pressures.
I am in no way defending those local authorities which have tried—even if they have backed down at the last minute — to behave illegally by not setting a rate —[Interruption.] It is interesting to note the unholy alliance between the two Front Benches, which the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) was so willing to exemplify—

Mr. Whitney: The hon. Gentleman said that he did not wish to indulge in a political harangue—a sentiment that I share—but he has entered into a typical Liberal facing-both-ways attitude. He suggested that he was with us in our approach to overspending authorities, but then demanded more expenditure. He cannot have it both ways, any more than he and his colleagues in the alliance can have it both ways on other matters. He must be clear about that.
The hon. Gentleman should also be clear about the impact of the social security reviews. He should recognise the switch of emphasis in all that we have proposed to give more aid to the families at the lower end of the income scale. I hope that he will have the good grace to acknowledge that.

Mr. Kennedy: In the context of political harangue, it would be tempting to enter into an argument on the Minister's last point about redistribution. The redistribution towards the working poor, if we can so define them, will be at the expense of the childless poor. The redistribution of finance within the family will be away from women and towards men. That is not an egalitarian redistribution.
I have made a common sense argument. It is that we need more emphasis in certain areas, but do not want the confrontation politics that lead to illegality to be the means to achieve that. It is ridiculous to suggest that that is somehow having one's cake and eating it. The Minister is likely to be summoned by the chairman of the Conservative party, beause he committed the unholy crime of referring to the alliance, when he should have referred to the SDP or the Liberal party.

Ms. Harman: The hon. Gentleman mentioned prevention with regard to children in care. May I take it from that that he is critical of the Liberal council on the Isle of Wight, which has not provided a single day nursery

place? Does he think that the council ought to make provision for day nursery places, or does he condone its complete failure to provide any nursery places?

Mr. Kennedy: My constituency could not be further away from the Isle of Wight. I do not know whether the hon. Lady has visited the area and gained first hand experience.

Ms. Harman: No.

Mr. Kennedy: The hon. Lady has not visited the area, but has looked at a set of figures—

Ms. Harman: There is nothing to look at.

Mr. Kennedy: If that is the contempt with which the hon. Lady holds the people of the Isle of Wight, this is a rather ridiculous issue. Before the hon. Lady makes this kind of—

Ms. Harman: rose—

Mr. Kennedy: Perhaps the hon. Lady will allow me to respond to her question. I said that I did not want to get involved in a political harangue, but I am being goaded by the two Front Benches. If the hon. Lady makes such a point about the Isle of Wight, she should have the courtesy to go there to study the provisions that have been made. I am neither defending nor condemning. I have not visited the area, and I am not willing to speak through ignorance, but apparently the hon. Lady is willing to do that.

Ms. Harman: The hon. Gentleman has misconstrued my intervention. I meant that there is no child care day nursery provision to go to look at.

Mr. Kennedy: The hon. Lady has put that on the record. I would add, however, that the hon. Lady has studied the figures, but that she has not visited the area before pronouncing, tonight and on other occasions, on the level of provision on the Isle of Wight. Perhaps her mail bag is full of complaints. I have not received any complaints about my Liberal partners' dreadful behaviour in this respect. Perhaps the hon. Lady has had a different experience.
I have said enough about preventive aspects. 1 thought that would be the least controversial of the matters discussed.
The Minister referred to social worker training and to what I thought was a rather depressingly long consultative process. I am not pouring cold water on the idea of consultation. It is necessary, and it has to be practical, and realistic. However, I thought that there was a certain amount of "Sir Humphrey's" style as the Minister described what was involved in the consultative process—the interest, concern and almost watching brief which the Minister's Department was to adopt. It would be interesting to hear the Minister's response to the support which the four social services associations have given to the need for the three-year training of social workers. The three-year training would include modules in particular specialties of the type referred to by the Select Committee on Social Services.
It is clear that the family courts will be the subject of considerable discussion when the report is published after Easter. I acknowledge that north of the border we have a slightly different situation. If I may be so bold, I think that it is one which could be commended to other parts of Britain. In Scotland, emphasis is given to the principles that are discussed in the family courts, whatever shape or


form they may take. The children's panel system is important. The status of the child, the parents or the foster parents—indeed, the whole relationship which is built up within the Scottish system — would repay further attention. Once the report is published, perhaps we will have the opportunity to discuss some of these matters further.
I welcome the debate. The horrific incidents of last year have led to much discussion and public debate. It is important that in the course of this debate—I think the House has done this despite the odd difference of opinion—the matter is discussed in a calm and reasoned way. I hope that the results of these deliberations will be the right ones, especially for children, who are at the centre of our concern.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: I welcome this important debate. I am delighted to be one of the members of the Select Committee on Social Services which undertook this lengthy and full inquiry into a vital issue of growing concern to all British people.
I commend the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short) who introduced the report of the Select Committee. It has been a pleasure to serve under the chairmanship of the hon. Lady for nearly 12 years, as she has provided considerable leadership to the Committee, not least in this report. I do not intend to follow the hon. Lady by giving a broad sketch of the conclusions and recommendations which are, as the Minister has said, 150 in number. I wish to concentrate on wardship and family courts and fostering.
First, I want to pay a tribute, as the hon. Lady has done, to our advisers. They have been immensely helpful to the Committee in a detailed and complicated area involving difficult legislation. I also wish to pay tribute—as I did perhaps in an intervention during the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie)—to the National Association of Young People in Care. Before the association gave its evidence to the Committee I viewed its evidence somewhat dubiously. I wondered about the type of evidence it would give. We met members of the association on one of our visits and subsequently they came before our Committee to give formal evidence. I was highly impressed with their grasp of the problems that faced young people in care. They were not the eight to 10 year-olds, or babies in nappies, or young people who require feeding and the type of advice suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South. They were relatively mature young people, teenagers, who for one reason or another had got themselves into trouble and subsequently into care.
The representatives of NAYPIC were highly articulate and a responsible group of people. The Committee was impressed with the evidence they gave. I wish to emphasise to my hon. Friend that many of them were keen for residential care places to be available for the likes of themselves and those who come after them. These young people could not just be dealt with through fostering, adoption or the other facilities that are available through the social services. They believed that residential care homes were essential, though perhaps not in such large numbers as in the past. However, there remain some young people for whom this type of care is ideal.
I remind my hon. Friend that there has been a great restructuring of the procedures and structure in these homes. The young people do not have breakfast, luncheon and evening meal produced for them as in a hotel or hostel. The young people have to get the meal for themselves and they play an important part in the running of the home under the supervision of residential home care social workers. There is an important role for residential care in the future.
I share the views expressed by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East and by my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South. I believe that fostering can play a vital role in dealing with young people who get themselves into trouble, who are thrown out of their home, or who come under the responsibility of the social services. Will the Minister comment, if he is to respond to this debate, on the three main recommendations on fostering in the report? With regard to fostering contracts, the Committee recommended that guidance on written agreements on foster placements should be included in the guidelines accompanying the revised boarding-out regulations. It is important, not only for the young people who will be fostered but for prospective foster parents, and those who are existing foster parents but who are unsure of their future.
The Committee also recommended a pilot project for the use of voluntary organisations to recruit foster parents. I consider that the voluntary sector has a vital role to play in recruiting foster parents and I believe it will have an increasing part to play in dealing with young children in care in the future.
The Select Committee recommended that local authorities consider extending further support to local foster parent groups. My hon. Friend the Minister rightly talked about the real growth of 20 per cent. since 1978–79 in the allocation of expenditure to the personal social services. But I hope that he will not overlook the fact that the Association of Directors of Social Services, which is in the process of analysing outturn figures for 1985–86 and public expenditure trends, has said that they show that real expenditure in the shire counties is down by 1·07 per cent. on the 1984–85 figures, down by 0·23 per cent. in the metropolitan district councils, and up by 2·81 per cent. in the London boroughs.
I presume that my hon. Friend will say that some of the most deserving areas in inner London are getting the 2 per cent. built-in increase which has been carried forward from 1976, when it was decided that that sort of growth rate was required and it was set out in the Government publication "Priorities for Health and Personal Social Services in England". I hope that my hon. Friend will not take it for granted that every social service in London and the metropolitan districts and counties is benefiting from the substantial increase in real terms that has taken place under this Government.
I am most concerned about child care legislation and the family courts which have been touched upon, particularly by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East. Our Committee clearly recognised the unsatisfactory state of child care law in Britain. Legislation, as we all know, has developed piecemeal over the years in an attempt to reflect the changing needs and attitudes of society. Our Committee recommended that the DHSS set up a working party on child care law. All the members of the Committee


were impressed by the case put to them for a change in jurisdiction for children and the establishment of what we have come to describe as a family court.
The Government, as the Minister said, have now published as a consultative document their review of child care. I was pleased to learn that that had generated about 1,000 representations to the Department. That is a substantial number and I welcome it.

Mr. Whitney: I said 180.

Mr. Winterton: My hearing is obviously beginning to go as my age advances, but even that is a substantial number of representations and I hope that he will heed what they say.
The Lord Chancellor and the Home Office have established a separate working party to review the case for a united family court and they are planning to issue a consultative document shortly, perhaps in two months' time. I hope that that can be brought forward because it will be valuable in deciding exactly what is required for the establishment of a family court. I, like many members of the Committee, am already sold on the idea of a family court because they already exist and are working extremely well in Scotland. My hon. Friend the Minister may say that the law in Scotland is different. Indeed it is, but the example is there and the precedent is set and the sooner we have it established in England and Wales the better it will be for our dealings with young people.
Let me refer briefly to some of the horrific cases that have been highlighted in the press and media and which have been referred to during the debate. The Jasmine Beckford report refers to the gratuitous comments of the magistrates, which, as we all know, set the pattern for the subsequent handling of that case. In the Andrew Riley case, which relates to my constituency, the decision of the Chester Crown court to make a probation order effectively prevented any subsequent action by the local authority to remove young Andrew Riley from his mother's care, and what a tragedy that turned out to be.
Early in 1982 in Cheshire the social services brought a four-year-old child before the local magistrates court with an application for a care order. Sadly, the magistrates made a supervision order and within four months the child was dead. That mirrors the Wayne Brewer case in Somerset. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Mr. Walters) will not take it amiss if I say that that perhaps casts some doubt on the efficacy of his private Member's Bill.
In 1983 two parents were prosecuted in the Chester Crown court for abusing their little girl. Surprisingly, they were found not guilty, and gratuitous comments by the judge that he entirely supported the jury's verdict and that the case should not have been brought before the court again made the subsequent management of that case difficult. In the event, the Cheshire county council social services department took wardship proceedings and the court was well satisfied with the submissions presented.
The main point that we can draw from the experiences in Cheshire and of the Select Committee is that the Crown court structure was not designed for and is not able to deal properly with the matter that we are discussing. The adult court is concerned wholly with offences and it is clear from the court transcript of the case of Sandra Riley that the need to ensure Andrew's proper protection was not satisfactorily or properly considered.
We all know that the juvenile court has been shown to be seriously deficient in its ability to deal with complex child care cases. I understand from the social services in Cheshire that it increasingly has to have recourse to wardship proceedings in the family division where the proceedings are non-adversarial. There, as some hon. Members know, the priority is overridingly the interest of the child and decisions are made on the basis of probability rather than proof. That is probably the situation nationally, but it is clear that the family division was never intended to deal with the generality of child care cases and as a consequence it is becoming overloaded.
The message to me from cases that have been drawn to my attention and from the Cheshire county council is that we clearly need something akin to the family courts. The director of social services for Islington, Mr. John. Rae-Price, would argue for the Lothian type of family courts which now operate in Scotland. From the investigations of the Select Committee and from representations made to me, I believe that in Lothian the reporter would have intervened in the tragic Andrew Riley case in my constituency at an early stage and ensured a proper consideration of that child's interests within the judicial process as it applied to the mother.
The experiences of the Select Committee suggest that there should be an integration of the legal process in all matters relating to children. I make one particularly forceful plea—where child abuse occurs the prime interest should always be that of the child and not of the parents. The child should always be considered first. The parents' interests are important but in no way should they be considered as the first priority. That is the plea which I make not only as a layman, but as a member of the Select Committee. If that position had prevailed in the Andrew Riley case, that young eight-year-old boy, who was drowned in a bath by his mother who had previously killed two of her children, would be alive today. His case would have been treated differently in a family court. I make that plea from the head as well as from the heart.
In arguing for integration of all matters relating to children, I am sure that the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) would support me if I mention the Finer committee of 1974, which recommended a family court. The report states:
An institution to which the whole business of family law now dealt with in the Family Division of the High Court, the County Courts and the Magistrates' Courts will be assigned.
The proposals of the Finer committee have not been adopted by any Government in the intervening 12 years, although the debate in professional circles has continued with varying interest.
I am delighted to see the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East, who chaired the Select Committee, back in her place. The Committee believes that a family court could offer a better service to children and families, but in noting the lack of success under successive Governments does not suggest that family courts are likely to be established unless there is sustained political demand for them. I hope that our recommendation to the Government will be seriously considered and that there will be no procrastination.
In the unlikely event of an alliance Government, the position could be worse, because, as my hon. Friend the Minister said, the alliance is inclined to be a Janus looking in both directions at the same time, wanting more money spent and expenditure pegged to bring down inflation.


I look forward to the continued membership of the hon. Member for Ross, Cromarty and Skye (Mr. Kennedy) on the Committee. He has come on to the Committee only recently by the decision of the House and he has already made a contribution. From the articulate way in which he dealt with the report rather than the political controversy in which he became involved, I am sure that he has a major contribution to make to the Committee.
I make the plea that the Government should seek to introduce in this House, or in another place if that is more appropriate to speed up the process, legislation to introduce family courts. That would be to the benefit of families and to those people about whom I am personally concerned—young people.

Mr. Dennis Walters: My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) had a point when she said that the strictures of the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) about the Government's lack of concern would have sounded more convincing if the hon. Lady had not been left so isolated, not only by the Front Bench, but by her Back Benchers. She did not seem to have much support.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short), who chaired—

Mr. Frank Haynes: I do not believe that it is fair for Conservative Members to attack Labour Members for not being present. The position has been the same on both sides of the House. No more than six or seven Conservative Members have been in the Chamber since the beginning of the debate, so come off it.

Mr. Walters: I was perfectly cool, but the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes) appears not to be cool. The position on attendance was about 15:1. We even had the Secretary of State present during the debate, and it was nice to see him. There would appear to have been a difference of emphasis in the interest shown.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East on her speech this evening and on having chaired the Committee, which presented such an impressive, massive and relevant report. The report runs to several volumes and I cannot pretend that I have read it word for word, but I have studied it carefully and been much impressed by its recommendations.
A few weeks ago I moved the Second Reading of the Children and Young Persons (Amendment) Bill, which deals specifically with children in care under court orders. I do not feel that I should debate the Bill now with my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton), but I should point out that the Bill does not inhibit the argument about family courts. It aims to introduce in the immediate future reforms and safeguards, which its sponsors from both sides of the House believe would be helpful and relevant.
I had the opportunity on Second Reading to set out the Bill's objectives and to put forward several personal reflections and views on that important and emotive subject. I was able to do so at considerable length and I therefore intend to intervene only briefly tonight to make some observations, of which I hope that the Government will take note.
It is important that the DHSS should reassure social workers that the changes that may be required in child care law do not imply a diminution or loss of their status. Social workers should welcome provisions which reinforce judgments and conclusions reached by them and which, on occasions, might disagree with those conclusions. The speed at which cases are decided should not be significantly affected. As I said on Second Reading of the Children and Young Persons (Amendment) Bill, I strongly believe that if one should err, one should err on the side of caution.
I was concerned about an article in The Sunday Times which said that social workers were worried about the possibility that cases would be held up by my Bill, because I do not believe that the proposed adjustments and changes in the law would have that effect.
Costs inevitably feature prominently in discussions of this type. The care of children separated from their parents is an expensive service. The DHSS told the Social Services Select Committee during the preparation of its report that about £370 million was being spent on services for children in care, mostly on residential homes, hostels and boarding houses. At any one time, 18,000 children are in local authority care under section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 because they have been neglected or ill-treated. My Bill is, of course, specifically directed to the protection of those children who have been ill-treated and abused.
The Social Services Committee in its report refers to the fact that
There is now"—
that is in 1982 and 1983—
a far greater awareness than 10 years ago of the horrors of child abuse, and of the ways in which children can be protected from the worst of its effects. There are now fairly complex administrative arrangements for detecting and following up suspected abuse.
Prudently and sensibly the Committee went on to say:
Any temptation to be complacent about arrangements for dealing with child abuse will always be checked by another appalling tragedy.
Sadly, we have witnessed how accurate that comment has proved to be, because not one, but several appalling tragedies have shown that it would be unwise, irresponsible and foolish to be in any way complacent about the level of safety for children under threat of cruelty and abuse.
That brings me back to the question of expenditure. It is inevitable that improvements and changes in this area will cost extra money. It is not invariably the case that improvements cost more. Indeed, there are occasions when streamlining an organisation can make it better, more efficient and, at the same time, less expensive. If we decide to implement some of the proposals of the DHSS review on child care, and some of the recommendations which were spelt out so effectively in the Blom-Cooper report, which include better training and greater resources, greater expense becomes inevitable.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Does my hon. Friend agree that the improvement in the court system that I suggested would also be valuable? He may be aware that the Sandra Riley case had nothing to do with incompetence or inefficiency of the social services. If anything, it was a breakdown in communication between the psychiatrist dealing with the case and the probation officer. A new court scenario could bring that kind of situation to an end.

Mr. Walters: I agree with my hon. Friend. As I said, my Bill does not inhibit the debate on family courts. I should like to draw my hon. Friend's attention to some of the provisions of my private Member's Bill, which includes improvements in the present court structure, and which would meet some of his points. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend's earlier comment that priority should always go to a child. Where a child has suffered abuse, the parents no longer have equal rights with the child, as they would have had if that had not been the case. The child's right must be pre-eminent.
To return to the question of expense, if some of the provisions in my Bill, which introduces new safeguards and better legal procedures to protect vulnerable children in care, are accepted, as I hope that they will be, extra expenditure will also be incurred. We are talking not about vast sums, but about more money. Although I am fully aware of the need to act responsibly over public expenditure, it would be most unwise for the Government to make the issue of cost fundamental to change, reform and progress when dealing with child protection. It is an extremely sensitive area, about which there is widespread and very deep and justified public anxiety. People rightly care profoundly about the matter, and not merely as a result of a few horrifying cases which have recently been brought to public attention. The Government should take heed of that feeling and act accordingly.

Mr. Andy Stewart: Today's debate gives me the opportunity to raise a specific issue that is causing perplexing anxiety among an increasing number of parents. I have one such family in my constituency. Their nightmare began in August 1985 when Louise was admitted to hospital with a spiral fracture of the left femur. The local authority commenced public proceedings against her parents, and during those proceedings 15 witnesses gave evidence, five of whom were doctors. The medical opinion was divided, and at least one doctor, a leading expert on the subject, was convinced that there was no evidence of non-accidental injury. However, the weight of medical evidence was in favour of the other opinion, and on that basis the magistrates made a court order.
I accept that children must have the full protection of the courts, and my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) explained why that must be so. But what about the rights of parents in cases where medical opinion is divided? Louise's parents have no right of appeal against the order, and, subsequently, the local authority can place the child for adoption, terminating nature's strongest bond—that between parents and child.
The terrible aspect of the case I have mentioned is that the child may suffer from a congenital bone disease known as osteogenesis imperfecta. The fracture was entirely typical of the disease, and the child shows at least one sign on clinical examination that she probably suffers from that fairly rare condition. It may be months or even years before another fracture occurs, if she has that condition, but meantime the family may be destroyed.
It seems wholly wrong that parents in such a position have no legal recourse, and I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to institute an inquiry into the injustices practised against such parents.

Mr. Peter Thurnham: I am glad to take part in the debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr. Stewart) because a similar case has occurred in my constituency.
The case continued for five months and included court cases. Although it has now been solved satisfactorily, to the extent that the child has been returned to the parents, both the child and parents went through a period of agony and nightmare. I wish to draw the attention of my hon. Friend the Minister to two points that arise from the case.
First, there is a need for more medical research to establish a diagnosis for the disease without dispute. In my constituents' case there were six medical opinions, two of which held that it was a case of brittle bone disease, but four felt that they could not rule out non-accidental injury. More research should be carried out to establish how we can diagnose this disease beyond doubt.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: My hon. Friends the Members for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) and for Sherwood (Mr. Stewart) are drawing into the debate an aspect that has not so far been part of our deliberations. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East believe that in the case to which he refers there was any reason why the social services and other expert bodies might have been worried? Had the social services been involved with the family earlier?

Mr. Thurnham: The family had a good background and there was no question about the care that they gave the child. In view of the divided medical opinion, I do not wish to criticise the social workers, who have to be particularly careful in these cases. The public concern that has arisen in other cases shows the need for such care, as does the fact that these decisions have to be made by a committee, which has to consider all the evidence before it. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to say that there should be more research into the medical causes so that we can have a diagnosis that establishes the matter beyond all doubt.
Secondly, we must have court procedures that do not lead to such long delays. In this case the child was separated from the parents over Christmas. That was a particularly harrowing experience. The court case could not be held earlier because, among other reasons, the court was full of licensing applications. This highlights the need for court proceedings that will enable such cases to be heard more quickly.
I speak from the point of view of my experience of constituency cases that have come to my attention and my personal interest, having adopted last December a severely handicapped child. The child had been in care for eight years, had been with our family as a foster child for two years, and had spent six years before that being shuffled about from pillar to post. Therefore, I have personal experience of the problems of children in care.
This evening, I wish to speak about the most deprived people in our society—handicapped children in Long-term institutional care, of whom there are some 3,000, some in NHS hospitals and some in local authority care. The Government's response to recommendation 93 rather misses the point. It calls for the recommendations of the Harvie report, which came out in 1974, to be implemented. However, in their response the Government concerned themselves only with children in voluntary and


other homes, whereas two thirds of such children in long-term institutional care are in statutory institutions, of which NHS hospitals are those that cause the greatest concern because the children may not be properly in care. They may have broken their contacts with their parents and be, to all intents and purposes, parentless, but also not in the care of the local authority from which they came. They may be hundreds of miles away, and not even known to the local authority. The group Exodus has drawn attention to the plight of these children, the number of whom has been substantially reduced. However, there are 500 in NHS hospitals in England and Wales and a further 500 in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Government should do more to help in such cases.
On the fostering and adoption of handicapped children, I once again ask my hon. Friend to consider the need for standard adoption allowances. Only last month, I had a surgery case of a family that had adopted one handicapped child and had a second handicapped child in foster care. The parents were unable to fund the costs that would be incurred if they adopted the child and thereby lost the fostering allowances. They were having difficulty in heating the house, because the children need to be kept in warm conditions because of their handicaps. They have had to move to a smaller house because they could not manage, and they have asked why more help could not be given to them in their task. As the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short) said, such adoption relieves the state of enormous expense because fostering and adopting care is less expensive than institutional care. This family is providing care, but has been hindered in providing it in the way that it would like to do. It should be encouraged to do so rather than discouraged by the financial situation.
I draw the attention of my hon. Friend the Minister to the case made by the British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering. It strongly feels that there should be standard adoption allowances and that the present scheme, which is sometimes defended as being experimental and providing variety, is nothing but a cause of great confusion. The problems vary from one part of the country to another as local authorities try to come to grips with them in different ways, and find that they cannot do so as they would wish because of the costs involved. I ask my hon. Friend to look at this carefully and come to a decision before he is forced to do so when the present arrangements lapse in 1989.
I have sufficiently covered the points about the brittle bones cases, but I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to work closely with his colleagues in the Department of Education and Science to see whether more provision can be made in the Budget to provide for research into this disease.

Mr. Archie Hamilton (Lords Commissioner to the Treasury): I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Bishops (Retirement) Measure

Queen's Consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified.

Sir William van Straubenzee (The Second Church Estates Commissioner, Representing Church Commissioners): I beg to move,
That the Bishops (Retirement) Measure, passed by the General Synod of the Church of England, be presented to Her Majesty for Her Royal Assent in the form in which the said Measure was laid before Parliament.

The Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Biffen): , by Her Majesty's command, acquainted the House, That Her Majesty, having been impressed of the subject matter of the motion, gives her consent, as far as Her Majesty's interest is concerned, That the House may do therein as it shall think fit.

Sir William van Straubenzee: I know that the House expects whoever proposes these Measures to justify them—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): Order. I am sorry to intervene, but would it be convenient for the two Church Measures to be taken together?

Sir William van Straubenzee: With respect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, they should be taken separately. I have in mind your ruling about proposed private business, and I shall speak briefly.
The House expects whoever proposes these Measures to justify them. For this Measure, that can be done briefly. A large part of it is consolidation of minor amendments of the law concerning the resignation of a bishop due to incapacity because of physical or mental disability. The Measure sets out the new arrangements for that. Such arrangements were last set out in 1951. The Measure also brings within its ambit similar provisions, although with appropriate amendments, for the resignation for that purpose of archbishops.
It was felt that the arrangements for bishops suffragan and diocesan were unduly burdensome for them to have to be confirmed by Her Majesty in Council. Therefore, this Measure has a new provision which requires a bishop wishing to resign to consult the archbishop of the province and then tender his resignation for approval in a written instrument. The Order in Council will still be necessary for the resignation of an archbishop.
I have the voting figures for the Court of the Ecclesiastical Committee, which deemed the Measure to be expedient, and those for the General Synod. No votes were cast against the motion.

Mr. Tony Benn: Church of England Measures come in a special category of parliamentary business and are normally passed on the nod, because there is a general convention that the Church should be self-governing. Since the famous 1928 Prayer Book case, the House has never decided to go against the advice of the Church of England. Therefore, the general principle that the House has adopted is that if the Church of England wants a Measure, it should have it. That is why the hon. Member for Wokingham (Sir W. van Straubenzee) presented the Measure with commendable brevity, and without feeing it necessary to argue the details and the merits of the case.


However, this is a specially interesting Measure because we have an established Church. We are talking not just about the resignation of a bishop, but about the removal, under statutory provision, of a Member of the House of Lords. A bishop who sits in the House of Lords enjoys, in accordance with our normal parliamentary language, the status of a lord spiritual. If a bishop wishes to retire on the grounds that he is physically or mentally incapable, there is a proper provision for him so to do. There is no provision for a peer to resign, as I learnt to my cost some years ago. If a Member of Parliament wishes to resign, he or she must apply for an office of profit under the Crown.
I ask the House to consider what would happen if a bishop who is thought to be physically or mentally incapable is asked to resign but does not do so. Two of the senior bishops of the province in which he serves can go to the archbishop of the province and have the man removed from Parliament, not just from the episcopacy. If an archbishop who is mentally or physically handicapped is asked to resign but chooses not to do so, the procedure is slightly more complicated. Two bishops from his province go to the archbishop of another province and the archbiship is removed from Parliament.
I do not intend to oppose the Measure. If that is the way the Church wants to run its affairs, presumably that is the way the House wishes it to run them, but the question that arises is the implication of this Measure for the status of the established Church. I come from a radical background. For a long time I believed, and I still strongly believe, that the more we continue to nod through Measures such as this without examining the implications because we feel that we should not interfere, the more the question of establishment will need to be considered.
The Church of England was nationalised by Henry VIII because of his conflict with the Pope. In one sense it is our oldest nationalised industry. Henry VIII was not prepared to have a foreign potentate exercising great power in Britain. Therefore, the Act of Supremacy was designed to secure that the Church of England conformed to the wishes of the king of the day. The reasons for this have long since disappeared. There is a very wide diversity of faith in Britain. If one considers attendances at communion, other denominations appear to have a larger membership than the Church of England. However, we continue to preserve the fiction of an established Church whose bishops are appointed by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister's powers are now limited to a choice between one or two names that are offered by the commission. But the Prime Minister does not have to be a Christian, let alone a member of the Church of England. The House retains a residual power to determine all sorts of questions, including that of the Prayer Book.
The Church-state link is also uneasy for contemporary reasons that have come to the fore in the last year or two. Bishops have properly found themselves compelled by their faith to make sharp criticisms of the state of which they are supposed to be a part. For example, the Archbishop of Canterbury was rebuked for his sermon after the Falklands war. There have been more recent examples. Bishops have made political comments that have led to counter comments against the bishops because of their theological opinions.
This measure provides a legitimate peg upon which to hang the question whether the link between the Church of England and the organs of the state should finally be

severed, notably the link between the Church of England and Parliament. There are many other Christian denominations. Other people call themselves humanists and atheists. People from other countries who come to live here have a range of different beliefs. I refer to the Hindus, the Sikhs and the big Jewish community.
The hon. Member for Wokingham performed his function with commendable parliamentary skill—[Interruption.] I am not making fun of him; he presented the Measure in exactly the way that this lingering residual link should be handled in Parliament. However, it is manifestly absurd that we should be asked to deal with the question theoretically by vote although actually on the nod. There are many people—I am one of them because of my radical, liberal background—who believe that it is absolutely wrong that the Church should be an agent of the state, even in the very limited way that this now operates.
I do not wish to oppose the Measure and I shall sit in my place when the vote is called, but I know, because I have spoken out against the Church-state link and in favour of disestablishment, that many churchmen believe that the time has come to negotiate a parting, with good will, between the Church of England and the British state. The implications of this retirement Measure for the membership of Parliament provide a suitable opportunity to raise this matter. It will not be long before the pressure for change is felt. When it is, I hope that the House will play a constructive role in making possible the disestablishment of the Church of England.

Mr. Frank Field: I wish only to correct the record. In doing so, I welcome my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) to these debates. I have been a Member of Parliament since 1979, and I have attended every debate on ecclesiastical business, bar one. I do not remember having seen my right hon. Friend at any other debate on Church business. Had he attended our debates more assiduously, he would know that Church of England business does not go through on the nod. On 16 July 1985 we rejected the bishops Measure that was considered on that occasion.

Mr. Harry Greenway: The hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) is absolutely right. He might have gone further. He might have corrected the history lesson of the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) and invited him to investigate the true catholicity of the Church of England. What he said was erroneous in many respects. I accept that he did not intend it, but it could cause great offence to many sincere, practising members of the Church of England.

Mr. Benn: When I made a major speech some years ago, I consulted a large number of people who held high positions in the Church. I am sure that the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) will be the first to admit that there is a large and growing body of opinion in the Church of England that it ought to be disestablished so that its freedom can be preserved and developed.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. In this debate we are not interested in whether the Church of England should be established or disestablished. The House must confine itself to the Measure that is before it.

Mr. Greenway: The right hon. Member for Chesterfield was allowed to dilate on that point for some time, Mr. Deputy Speaker. However, that is not my point. The right hon. Gentleman challenged the ancient catholicity of the Church of England, which has something to do with the establishment of the Church of England, but that is not the point that I was trying to make. The autonomy of the Church of England is accepted by most hon. Members, and the function of the House has been described by the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field).
I ask my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Sir W. van Straubenzee) to deal with this question when he replies to the debate. If it is thought that a bishop is physically or mentally incapable and that he should therefore be asked to resign from his see, the Measure does not make clear at what point the procedures will be set in train. People can be seriously physically ill or infirm, but can then recover. They can also be seriously mentally ill or infirm, but can then recover. The result of the Measure might therefore be that bishops are removed from their bishoprics.
I should like to be reassured that these procedures will not be put in hand lightly. A solid assurance ought to be given that a bishop must be immeasurably beyond recovery, either physically or mentally, before this Measure can be enacted, or it could be dangerous.
I should also like my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham to deal with the age at which bishops retire. Does he consider that the present age of retirement is worth having, or does he consider that there should be a retirement age? The Measure relates a little to the retirement age of bishops.
Many agree that bishops and archbishops make their best contributions in old age. I cite in particular Dr. Cyril Barbage, Archbishop of York, who died at 81 years of age, having said when he became bishop that he would retire at 65. He said that he would never allow himself to be called "My Lord" or any other fancy title. He went on well beyond the age at which archbishops and bishops are expected to retire. I hope—

It being Seven o'clock, and there being private business set down by THE CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS, under Standing Order No. 7 (Time for taking private business), further proceedings stood postponed.

British Railways (Stansted) Bill (By Order)

Order for Second Reading read.

7 pm

Mr. Alan Haselhurst: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May we have your guidance? I perceive that our appreciation of the Bill's precise effects, if we are to judge it right, is tied up with another measure—the Airports Bill which is now in Standing Committee. Will it be in order to refer to that Bill because it seems to be almost impossible to judge this Bill without reference to that other Bill?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): It will be in order to refer to that Bill incidentally. Hon. Members must not argue too wide a case, but it is in order to refer to it incidentally.

Mr. Patrick McNair-Wilson: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Students of British Railways legislation will know that this is the second time in seven days that I have proposed the Second Reading of a British Railways Bill. I make no apologies for that.
This Bill, in common with all its predecessors, relies upon the duties placed upon the board under the Transport Act 1962. The most important of those duties is as follows:
It is the duty of the Board…to have due regard, as respect all those railway and other services and facilities, to efficiency, economy and safety of operation.
This Bill is designed to do precisely that.
I shall outline quickly the structure of the Bill. Part I defines the terms and incorporates the provisions of the general Act which is common to all such legislation. Part II deals with works for which authorisation is sought. Part III authorises the board to purchase land the rights over land. Part IV deals with the incorporation of protective provisions as they relate to the Crown, the police and the electricity, water and gas undertakings. Part V provides a limit, in clause 17, of up to 10 years from the passing of the Bill, the period of starting construction. The two schedules are self-explanatory.
The Bill states:
By reason of the proposed development and the expansion of Stansted airport by the British Airports Authority it is expedient that the Board should be empowered to construct the works authorised by this Act and to purchase or use the land referred to in this Act so as to provide improved services and facilities for railway passengers travelling to or from the said airport".
It could be a matter for debate whether every airport should have a link with the main railway system. Many people believe that London airport should have had such a facility when it opened after the last war. This Bill is concerned not with other airports, but with Stansted. It reflects a prudent and sensible attitude on behalf of the board to ensure that powers exist to build the railway link, should the proper finance be available.
Work No. 1 relates to the principal work to be undertaken by the board—the Stansted spur road. That involves the construction of a new length of railway of 6,035 m, or just over 6 km, from a point on the London to Cambridge line a short distance north of Stansted station, into the enlarged airport site. The track will be


double as far as the tunnel under the airport runway, single track in the tunnel and be double once again into the airport station which will have two platforms.
Work No. 2 requires that a short length of additional railway shall be built between the London and Cambridge line and work No. 1 to allow direct trains from and to Cambridge. The railway building part of the Bill is substantial but extremely simple. I regard it as an imaginative response to the need to provide proper transport.
Works Nos. 3 and 6 relate to the diversion of certain watercourses necessary to complete works Nos. 1 and 2. Work No. 7 involves the construction of a new road to provide access to the site which, after the building is completed, will be left to provide access for maintenance work.
Work No. 6 gives powers to make and maintain the station under the proposed terminal which will give access directly above to the airport concourse. Clauses 7, 8 and 9 provide additional facilities to ensure that any surface water can be taken away.
The Bill is simple and straightforward, but it has aroused great interest among many hon. Members, who see it as an attempt by the board to favour Stansted over Manchester. I remind the House that in 1984 I moved the Second Reading of a similar Bill to give exactly the same powers to Manchester to enable it to provide exactly the same facilities for travellers to that airport. The board obtained works and land powers under the British Railways Act 1984 for the construction of a railway to Manchester international airport.
The powers were obtained by the board in the face of determined opposition from a property developer and in spite of difficult negotiations with local authorities—the Manchester council and Manchester city council. I hope that hon. Members will not deny the board a Second Reading of a Bill to do for Stansted precisely that which was done nearly two years ago for Manchester because there is no direct relationship between the two schemes. It would be like counting apples with pears to argue that Stansted should not enjoy these provisions because Manchester is being treated as a second-class case. That is not true. Manchester already has such provisions and Stansted is merely being brought into line with Manchester.
Other comments have been made to the effect that in the White Paper on airports assurances were given that there would be some direct linkage between the two schemes and that they would be considered contemporaneously. There is no evidence—certainly not in the White Paper—that there is any order of priority between Manchester and Stansted under the two rail link schemes. They are not in competition and never have been intended to compete.
There are other hon. Members who will, no doubt, wish to raise matters such as the additional traffic on the line to London and the effect it may have on services.
As in the past, I shall do as much as I can to deal with individual problems as they arise, but I can assure the House that the board sees no reason for believing that the new link to the airport will do anything to diminish the service—indeed it should enhance it.
This is a simple, straightforward Bill. It does to an airport in the east what was done to one in the north-west. I hope the House will give the Bill a Second Reading.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): The House will wish to know that Mr. Speaker has not selected either of the amendments on the Order Paper.

Mr. Alan Haselhurst: This might seem at first sight a fairly straightforward proposition—that an airport which is about to be developed to a scale of some significance should, right from the start, be properly serviced by road and rail.
I am willing to be persuaded that the immediate institution of a rail link would be sensible for the community as a whole, as well as for the passengers who will use the airport. If it is a straightforward proposition that a rail link should be put in, it is extraordinary that London's premier airport, Heathrow, still does not have a surface rail link after 40 years. One cannot help musing about the priorities of British Rail or the Government that we should be asked tonight to approve a rail link for an airport which currently has a through-put of 500,000 passengers per annum when there is still no surface rail link to an airport that is running at 31 million passengers per annum.
I look forward to hearing what my hon. Friend the Minister of State has to say on behalf of the Government. Because of the eagerness of British Rail and maybe of the Government, people who have been vitally concerned with the Stansted issue for some time are suspicious that the name of the game is to maximise the airport's attraction and to ensure that everything possible is done to assist its growth potential.
Let us consider what the effects of a rail link might be. First and foremost, one has to consider the environmental aspects. My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest (Mr. McNair-Wilson) did not dwell on this, but I would imagine that British Rail has taken great care to ensure that the route of the spur from the main line into the airport avoids the greatest environmental difficulties.
There will, nevertheless, be a problem for the landowners concerned, and these things are never easy to cope with. I came to the Saffron Walden constituency when the shock waves were still being felt from the cutting through that constituency of the M11 motorway. The residual problems of dealing with compulsory purchase were felt for many years and I have no doubt there will be great distress if this Bill is approved and compulsory purchase orders have to be made. I suspect that there will be difficulties in the general environmental sense, but I hope that we may be assured that the route chosen for the rail link will do the least visual harm to an area which is extremely proud of its rural environment.
The second consideration is the effect that the establishment of a rail link, or its absence, will have on roads in the area. There would be some attraction in a rail link to Stansted airport if the result would be less road traffic in the area. We need some explanation of how the relationship is seen. What is the likely effect on road traffic of a rail link? Will it be beneficial to people in my area and in east Hertfordshire in that it will control the growth of traffic or even reduce it?
We are anxious that, so far, the Government have promised no more than £2 million to spend on roads in the area. Essex county council's shopping list is rather greater —£38 million. I do not necessarily wish to endorse that figure, but there is a suspicion that £2 million will be inadequate for our roads. We are understandably worried


about the effect on our roads of growth at the airport. We shall be interested to know whether establishing a rail link will be beneficial.

Mr. Bowen Wells: My hon. Friend will know that Hertfordshire's claim for additional expenditure on the roads exceeds that of Essex by £1 million. My hon. Friend must bear that in mind when advancing his argument.

Mr. Haselhurst: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Hertfordshire and Essex county councils are working closely on this matter. The invisible boundary between our two counties makes no difference to the problems of the area, which must be seen as a whole.
The question that exercises minds in my constituency and, I dare say, in neighbouring ones is whether the establishment of a rail link to Stansted will ensure that the airport is a runaway success. We are conscious that, when announcing his decision on airports policy, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State attempted to achieve some form of compromise so that the growth required would be limited or staged. That is the best crumb of comfort on which my constituents, who have been suspicious of and worried about a large-scale airport at Stansted, can feed. They are prepared to make the best of the Government's decision. There is a compromise—we shall have investment in the airport, which will create jobs in the area. The airport will develop to a certain extent. That assurance would be somewhat damaged, however, if they felt that investment was being poured in in the form of a rail link, which would accelerate the pressures on the airport and render the limit set by the Government relatively meaningless in a short time.
My constituents do not regard the link simply from an amenity point of view. They are anxious about whether it will act as an accelerator on airport growth. Hon. Members should bear that in mind. My constituents are not trying to reverse the decision about the airport, but they would like to believe that there will be some reliance on the limitation which the Government set.

Mr. Jerry Hayes: I understand that, on St. Valentine's day, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport visited my hon. Friend's constituency and mine and that there was a discussion with various relevant bodies about infrastructure. Perhaps my hon. Friend could say what came of that meeting.

Mr. Haselhurst: I would be trespassing on the goodwill of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Transport if I went too far into that matter as it was a fact-finding visit essentially concerned with roads rather than rail. While I accept the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Mr. Hayes) that there is an interconnection between the road and rail infrastructure, and I have already referred to that, obviously my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State could not give commitments during his visit as to what the Government might subsequently do in relation to the roads infrastructure. Naturally, I hope that, since he has witnessed the situation, he will advise our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that more should be done than is presently planned.
Some of my constituents are worried that a rail link is simply a means of ensuring extra investment at Stansted

to promote the airport's growth and for no other reason. On the other hand, we must consider the possible effect on housing and urbanisation. I understand that a good rail link which would connect such stations as Tottenham Hale, Broxbourne and Harlow Town with the airport would ensure that people seeking employment at the airport from outside the immediate area would have a reliable service to satisfy their needs and curb the need to move into the area thus adding to the demand for new houses with the implications that has for the county structure plan.
That must be considered very carefully, and it is difficult to know whether such a proposition would work. Benefits may arise from a rail link if that link eases the pressure on general urbanisation in the area. It would be helpful to have further information on that point.
The other point to consider with regard to the effects of the rail link relates to the comfort and convenience of the passengers. Some of my hon. Friends will nod with understanding and sympathy when I say that the words "comfort" and "convenience" have not, in the past, been synonymous with Liverpool street station. There are grave anxieties as to whether any form of service could be comfortable and convenient if it runs out of that London terminus.
I am aware that British Rail is undertaking a major redevelopment of the station, which may considerably improve the service. It is worth noting, however, that a working party set up in 1980 to consider rail access to Stansted stated in a Department of Transport report in June 1981 that:
Liverpool Street is not a good location for the London terminal. It is some distance away from the main tourist centres in the West End, the surrounding area contains few hotels and hotel expansion is unlikely. The road system around Liverpool Street is already congested throughout the day and the Inner Ring Road near Liverpool Street is of a low standard. The additional traffic generated by an in-town terminal would increase the problems considerably. As regards links with the Underground. the Metropolitan/Circle line provides good connections with some BR main line stations, but the Central line, which is the main access to the West End is already severely overcrowded in the peak hours. The 1974 London Rail Study, (Part 2, paragraph 10.4.1) recorded that the Leyton-Chancery Lane section of the Central line was the most severe example of peak hour overcrowding on the Underground: although conditions have improved somewhat since then, London Transport have stated that a very high level of standing continues to occur, and that for the future conditions would remain inappropriate to accommodate air passengers and their baggage.
Although Liverpool street station might be considerably enhanced to benefit regular passengers, its very location —not the quality of service it offers once one arrives there—may be a difficulty for air passengers whose destination we must assume is unlikely to be the City of London but rather the West End. We must find out more about that and if we are being invited to support the rail link we must recognise that it will ultimately terminate at Liverpool street and not at a more convenient station.
My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest who promoted the Bill, said very little about the costings it involves. I believe that the House is entitled to have more information about the project if we are to grant it approval. What is the overall cost of the proposal? My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest did not tell the House what that would be. I hope he will intervene if he does know what the figure is. I understand from answers given by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that the Government expect a 7 per cent. rate of return in real terms


on the project, on the capital employed. The Secretary of State will judge that on an equal basis with any other project put before him. We ought to be given some idea whether my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest is satisfied that that rate of return will be achieved.
A considerable sum will need to be yielded in the form of passenger fares if there is to be a 7 per cent. rate of return. I recall that the cost of the electrification of the Bishop's Stortford to Cambridge line was put in 1983 terms at the order of £11 million to £12 million. One assumes that the project under discussion, which involves laying down railway track, boring a tunnel and building a station, will cost somewhat more than that. That figure might presumably be three or four times £11 million or £12 million. One need only carry out some preliminary mathematics to discover that the rate of return may have to be between £2·5 million and £3 million. That is the actual margin—not the total revenue—that has to be found to achieve such a result. That has consequences for the number of passengers who will be required to achieve that result. We need to know more, therefore, about the figures. How many passengers will be using the line? What data did British Rail use to make its calculations to embolden them to bring the matter to the House?
When the working party considered the matter in 1980–81, and the cost of the option—one of four that were originally considered and which is identical to the scheme incorporated in the Bill—it stated that:
The cost of this option, excluding any essential work at Liverpool Street that would be necessary and excluding any rolling stock requirements, would amount to about £50 million at 1980 prices. BR and BAA have estimated that the cost of the rail spur and associated works would be £47·7 million at 1980 prices but this does not include costs for signalling, electrification and land purchased by BR which have not been separately identified for the rail spur.
How many passengers will be needed to relate to such costs?
At that time, the British Airports Authority was talking in terms of a throughput of 15 million passengers per annum being achieved at Stansted by 1992. That was the other side of the equation when the working study report was made. In view of that evidence, we need precise information as to the present estimated costs and the projected number of passengers using the line. It is evident that a 15 million passenger target at Stansted will not be achieved by 1992 as the terminal is not due to open until at least 1990. In any case, the Secretary of State has said that it may be a facility for only 7 million to 8 million passengers per annum. It seems that the figures on the record will require radical readjustment in the light of what we now know. I should like to know how many passengers are expected to use the service, and I should like to have that information presented on the basis of year-by-year growth.
What proportion of the passengers going through the airport will want to reach it by rail? What proportion is it supposed will come from central London? To what extent will Stansted serve the needs of the population of a wider area embracing East Anglia, Colchester, Chelmsford and areas of Hertfordshire? It cannot be assumed that all the traffic will come on the north-south access. I assume that a major proportion will do so, but what figure is being ascribed in the calculations that lie behind the Bill?
What proportion of passengers will come by rail from Liverpool street to Stansted airport? I presume that such calculations will take into account that the high proportion

of passengers who use the refurbished line to Gatwick has started to decline. I understand that it rose at one stage to over 50 per cent. On evidence that I received recently from the British Airports Authority on a visit to Gatwick, it appears that the figure has declined to 40 per cent. What would be the figure for Stansted? Could it be a reliable figure, bearing in mind that there seems to be some fluctuation in rail usage to the only other London airport with a surface rail link?
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State says that there must be a 7 per cent. rate of return on capital invested. If his test is to be satisfied, by what year does that return have to be achieved? Presumably a 7 per cent. rate of return will not be achieved by 1991. By that stage the terminal would be barely open. The latest estimate of the British Airports Authority is that by 1991 throughput at Stansted using the existing facilities, which will be in use until the new terminal is opened, will he about 2 million passengers per annum. At what stage does the 7 per cent. rate of return have to be achieved?
Cost calculations must take into account the number of trains that are to run. The House will have noted that the quotation that I used from the working party's report excluded such matters as rolling stock. I must ask for information about the frequency of the service that is to be provided. That is necessary if we are to arrive at any judgment on the calculations that lie behind the scheme.

Dr. John Marek: The line will extend to Stansted and it will be on a north-south access. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the usage projections are overestimated? Many passengers will not want to come into London only to travel out of the capital for such a long distance northwards. It is likely that fewer passengers will use the line than British Rail or the Department of Transport have estimated.

Mr. Haselhurst: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for amplifying what I said about the hinterland being a source of passengers. Passengers may well come from the north, using the Mll and the A604 connection to the Al. They will make the calculation to which the hon. Gentleman has referred and reach the judgment that to enter London and travel out of it so far is not an attractive way of making their journey.
One of the first publications that the BAA issued in my constituency prior to the public inquiry referred to Stansted attracting traffic from the midlands and the north. I am sure that that factor is behind British Rail's plans. I am confident that it envisages the link as a spur that will go to Cambridge as well as to London. We know that cross-country services on the British Rail network are not especially good, but British Rail might envisage electrified connections at some stage with the east coast main line, which will bring services through Cambridge into Stansted. That may be a gleam in its eye. That is mere speculation on my part because there is no evidence of that as we consider the Bill.
I am concerned about the costs that are involved in running the trains that will be put on the proposed service. Part of the attraction of the Gatwick service has been the quality of the rolling stock that has been applied to it, which is of superior British Rail standard. I do not believe from what I hear that a similar standard of provision will be made on the Stansted route. I have not had wind of any new rolling stock coming on to the Liverpool street sector


of British Rail, notwithstanding the present electrification project or the Stansted project. I have a nasty feeling that the rolling stock and the locomotives will be hand-me-downs from other regions. That may have a beneficial effect on costings, but we are entitled to know the quality of the rail link that we are being offered and being asked to approve.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) has said in seated interjections, we do not know the price that will be charged for using the service. That factor must have an effect on the rate of return and the speed with which the desired rate is achieved. Another factor is the competition that British Rail will face. It is likely that there will be fast coach services. Under the beneficent rule of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, coach travel has become easier and faster. The competition from coach operators might have a considerable effect on the number of passengers who want to travel by train to Stansted.
An even more difficult factor to evaluate is the way in which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will use the powers that are sought in the Airports Bill, which is now being considered in Standing Committee, to direct traffic to Stansted. That must be a crucial element in British Rail's calculations in putting forward the scheme that we are considering. What is in the mind of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State? Will my hon. Friend the Minister of State tell us how the powers will be used? We have not heard anything about that during the Committee proceedings. How can we make a judgment on the efficacy and attractiveness of the scheme that is being put before us unless we know exactly what my right hon. Friend intends? Have there been conversations behind the scenes? Have there been nudges and winks to British Rail about the degree of traffic that will be diverted deliberately to Stansted under the powers that my right hon. Friend is taking? These are matters about which the House should know. They will obviously have a crucial bearing upon our consideration of the Bill.
If we are to make a judgment on the Bill, we are entitled to a great deal more information about the cost of the scheme and the calculations that are being made to arrive at it. If British Rail says in its defence that these are matters of commercial confidentiality, I understand that there may be aspects of its operations that it has good reason in all fairness to keep confidential, but it is a public corporation and it is seeking the permission of the House to expend moneys in a particular direction. Therefore, it behoves it to present the full facts so that we may ascertain whether they are worthy of our confideénce.
The railway line between Liverpool street and Cambridge is not good. I hope that I am not being disrespectful when I say that one's rank in life is no bar to experiencing major inconvenience on that line. When I was pleading with my hon. Friend's predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Sir R. Eyre), in 1983 for the electrification of the Liverpool street-Cambridge line I had occasion to refer to the Lea valley line. I said it was
the worst line running out of London under the auspices of British Rail. It suffers from what is known within British Rail as the cascade effect, in that someone in the imperfect world in which we live has to be at the bottom of the heap. That tends to

be the Liverpool Street operation of British Rail's Eastern region, and within that operation it is the Lea valley line that gets the oldest locomotives and the oldest rolling stock.
Over the years there has been a dreadful record of breakdown and delay, usually accompanied by rational explanation at the time. The journey from Audley End to Liverpool Street is at best 52 minutes. The main train of the morning, which is heavily used by commuters with business appointments to keep, is frequently delayed, sometimes by as much as half an hour on a 52-minute journey."—[Official Report, 13 May 1983; Vol. 42, c. 1012.]
That is the sort of standard we have been expected to tolerate in the past. The standard is intolerable. The whole thrust of British Rail's efforts to deal with that bad standard was to reduce the number of trains on the line. It is important to appreciate that. In order to get over the inherent difficulties British Rail has been reducing the number of trains. The Bill asks us to sanction a substantial increase in the number of trains.
I am indebted to the service group manager of the eastern region of British Rail, Mr. Trevor Hill, for supplying some statistics about performance. He tells me that in 1982 some 66 per cent. of morning peak trains and 59 per cent. of evening peak trains to and from Cambridge arrived within five minutes of the scheduled time. By 1985 this had improved to 72 per cent. and 63 per cent. respectively. That is not saying that 72 per cent. and 63 per cent. of morning and evening trains arrive on time. It presumably means that a percentage of those arrive late, but only up to a maximum of five minutes late. In other words, 28 per cent. of trains were clearly more than five minutes late in the morning and 37 per cent. of trains were more than five minutes late in the evening. This has improved by a further small percentage in the last six months, but at the rate of improvement that we have seen over the past three and a half years, it will be another 13 years before all the trains are on time—or shall we say within five minutes of being on time. In a candid sentence Mr. Hill admits:
There is clearly some way to go before the standards can be seen to be satisfactory, but I hope that I have demonstrated that we are moving in the right direction.

Mr. Christopher Murphy: May I discourage my hon. Friend a little more? He talks about the ancient rolling stock he has to suffer. In my constituency we have the benefit of brand new rolling stock, but I am afraid that the trains run even less to time than was the case before.

Mr. Haselhurst: I visibly sag to hear that information from my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Murphy). Perhaps I was naive enough to suppose that the grass was greener on the Great Eastern line, but clearly that is not so.
As British Rail is frank enough to admit, the standard of service on the Lea valley line is bad. Now we are told that it will be all right if British Rail is given permission to introduce a spur to the airport and put on extra trains and that it will manage somehow.

Mr. Peter Snape: Without straying too far from the provisions of the Bill, could the hon. Gentleman give the House some solutions to the problem of chronically bad timekeeping on the Lea valley line?

Mr. Haselhurst: I hope that I can satisfy the hon. Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape) by some of the remarks I intend to direct to that before I conclude my speech. British Rail has to come forward and offer


some explanation about how on earth it is to achieve a better standard of service. If it does not come up with a solution, what we shall get in comparison to the Gatwick flier is the Stansted stutterer because most of the trains seem to stop a number of times between the starting point and the end of the journey.
The House is being asked to approve what is virtually an absolute minimum service to the airport. We are not even told what the costs of that are to be. The Bill does not provide for an increase in the number of tracks on the Lea valley line south of the point where the airport spur reaches that line and through to Liverpool street. It does not provide for extra signalling schemes which might be necessary to give effect to British Rail's hope that it will be able to run an effective railway with an extra airport service operating on it. It does not provide for a terminal at St. Pancras, which was also considered as a possible option.
We are being offered the bare minimum, a skimped project, that will squeeze into the requirements of the Secretary of State to achieve a 7 per cent. rate of return. If British Rail had to include the dualling of the track, extra signalling and a proper, convenient terminal at St. Pancras, I would find it difficult to believe that the amount of money expended could possibly bring about the rate of return that the Secretary of State requires in relation to the likely throughput at Stansted. On what is proposed I do not even know what the likely expenditure will be.

Dr. Marek: If the timekeeping is as bad as the hon. Gentleman says—and I quite believe that it is, because it seems similar to my experiences on the London-Midland line—would it not be better for British Rail to invest capital, if it has any capital to invest, in the existing infrastructure in order to get the existing trains running on time? British Rail would be better advised to do that before starting to construct any more lines.

Mr. Haselhurst: The hon. Member for Wrexham makes a fair and relevant point. In fairness to British Rail and to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, we are seeing electrification of the line. That will bring about an improvement. Electric rolling stock, even hand-me-downs from the north-west, will provide a better service and help improve punctuality, about which Mr. Hill supplied me with figures, to go on improving. It requires a great act of faith for us set our seal of approval on this Bill against that record of performance. We are being asked simply to accept the asssurance of British Rail that it can increase the number of trains on the line, although it has not said in the context of this Bill exactly how many. We are asked to accept that everything will be all right on the day. One begs leave to doubt that.
Whether or not this rail link is right and will be a success can only be seen by trying to relate what is proposed with what is contained in the Airports Bill. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State seeks powers to regulate the distribution of air traffic within the London airport system. That will have a crucial bearing on the viability and operational effectiveness of a Stansted link. We must consider the type of traffic that will come to Stansted airport when judging its effect on the rail link. Will my right hon. Friend use his powers to direct more scheduled traffic to Stansted or will he use them to direct more charter traffic to Stansted? Charter and scheduled traffic have different patterns of operation, and those

patterns will affect the time of day when passengers seek to get to the airport. We have not been given any evidence on the pattern of traffic using Stansted airport and, therefore, on the likely numbers to use the rail link to central London. Has British Rail been offered any such evidence?
What about the sheer volume of traffic which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will try to ensure uses Stansted airport? My right hon. Friend will not take a hands-off position, allowing traffic to determine its own level. He will be very much in the market place, but we do not know the criteria he will use in intervening. Those criteria are essential factors in assessing the effect of a rail link.

Mr. Bowen Wells: It has been rumoured that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State intends forcibly transferring all charter aircraft operations from Gatwick to Stansted. It is likely that many of the aircraft will come in late at night and early in the morning to reduce costs. Until now, British Rail has not operated during the small hours of the morning or late at night. I very much doubt that it would do so if it had the opportunity it seeks under the legislation.

Mr. Haselhurst: My hon. Friend has hit the point again. There is rumour and speculation about the Government's exact intentions. We do not know whether BR similarly has to guess about what is in the mind of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State or whether my right hon. Friend has unburdened himself to BR in a way that he has not yet unburdened himself to the House.

Mr. Hayes: Does my hon. Friend agree that it goes further than that? The major carriers using Gatwick airport have made it clear that they do not want the bucket and spade trade at Gatwick airport, but that they want it to go to Stansted airport.

Mr. Haselhurst: I am trying scrupulously, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to keep within the terms of the Bill and nothing but the Bill. I do not want to venture too far down that lane. If we enter the realm of speculation about the possibilities of other countries which have a tight grip on air transport refusing to play the game that the Government wish them to play with respect to destinations in the London system, we shall be in for fun, and a great deal of difficulty. A terrible situation will develop and it will be difficult to calculate the effects.
Even if one tries to put that thought from one's mind, I think that we are still in a guessing game. I have heard no evidence to convince me that British Rail is not involved in that same guessing game. We are being asked to approve a measure that lacks substance. It is difficult for us to make a considered judgment on it.
My hon. Friend the Minister of State owes it to the House to state clearly what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State intends to do with the considerable powers he requires to regulate civil aviation. This will enable us to draw conclusions on the usage of the rail link. My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, who has represented British Rail in presenting the Bill, or British Rail at his behest must give the House considerably more information so that we can satisfy ourselves about what they seek to do. If we have a clear record of the evidence that has led them to conclude that the rail link is necessary, we can decide whether that link is in the interests of our constituents and the nation as a whole.

Mr. Peter Pike: I wish to oppose the Bill. I did not think that I would ever speak in opposition to a Bill that provided a basis on which British Rail could make investments, because I believe that investment by British Rail is important and I would normally wish to support such investment, but I must oppose this measure. The hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst) posed a number of important questions that must be answered, but I do not think that the Minister of State will be able to answer them satisfactorily. I believe that we should consider costs, capital investment in the line and potential usage before we are asked to give the Bill a Second Reading.
My one connection with Stansted is the fact that I was born in the area, although I left it at a relatively young age. Last year I went to Stansted to speak at the ASTMS college. I used the railway link between Liverpool street and Stansted. Compared with many lines endured by the people in the north-west, this line is much better. British Rail's investment in the line, in meeting the Government's wish to develop Stansted as the third London airport—I do not believe that the Government have made a case for that—will be to the detriment of investment in other areas because of the financial restraints imposed on British Rail. I agree with the intervention forcefully made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Dr. Marek) that money could be better used in other areas.

The Minister of State, Department of Transport (Mr. David Mitchell): Which investment proposition from British Rail are the Government preventing from going forward?

Mr. Pike: The hon. Gentleman surprises me. Only recently, in the past month, he turned down the electrification proposal for the railway line from Manchester to Blackpool. The Government should have approved that plan for that important tourist line, which needed development. Lancashire county council and the Greater Manchester council submitted a joint proposal to support that project, but the Government rejected it.

Mr. Mitchell: The hon. Gentleman should know that British Rail did not put forward a proposition for the electrification of the line. It put forward a different proposition—to use sprinter trains on that route, which would run at approximately the same speed as trains on the electrified route, but at substantially better value for money. If British Rail did not put forward a proposition for electrification, how can the hon. Gentleman pretend that I have turned it down?

Mr. Pike: The Minister is not facing the facts. It may well have been that British Rail, knowing the financial constraints imposed by the Government, did not submit a proposal other than for sprinter trains. The hon. Gentleman is well aware that Lancashire county council and the Greater Manchester council submitted a case for electrification. If the Minister received a proposal from British Rail for electrification of that line, would he be prepared to support it?

Mr. Mitchell: If I were to receive a proposition for electrification from British Rail, I would look at it carefully and judge it on the normal criteria. In general,

the hon. General will know that I have not found it necessary to turn down investment applications from British Rail.
If the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends on the councils concerned are prepared to finance the difference between British Rail's return on the cost of doing it with the fast sprinter and electrification, I am sure that British Rail would be interested to hear that proposition. I have not heard such a proposition. The hon. Gentleman is anxious to spend other people's money which they are not prepared to spend themselves.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We are now straying from the Bill. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will come back to the Bill.

Mr. Pike: I shall return to the Bill, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was saying that money should be used for those projects. I have no doubt that British Rail knows what financial constraints are placed upon it by the Government.

Dr. Marek: May I give one comparison between money that could be spent on the line that will be constructed for Stansted airport, if we pass the Bill, and on another project? I have in mind the singling of the Wrexham to Chester railway line. Money was not spent, and the line has been cut. Only last Thursday an inter-city train was over two hours late. I should have thought it would be far better, rather than spend the capital on the line to Stansted, to produce a proper service for a town with over 100,000 people. My hon. Friend knows that infrastructure cuts are about to be made in his locality. There must be countless examples up and down the United Kingdom. For example, a new bridge could be constructed on the line north of Inverness to Wick. There are many projects which are far more worthy for British Rail to undertake than this one.

Mr. Pike: I do not want to stray too far along that path, but it is true. The east Lancashire line from Burnley to its terminus at Colne or Chaffer's sidings in Nelson is also to be singled to save money under the financial restraints being placed on British Rail by the Government.

Mr. Tony Lloyd: I wonder whether my hon. Friend would speculate on the position between British Rail and the Minister. Is it possible, when it comes to spending money under a Bill such as this or on a project such as the electrification of the Blackpool to Manchester line, that there is a ministerial nod and wink before anything is done? Does my hon. Friend believe that the Minister had not made his views known on this Bill or on the electrification of the Blackpool to Manchester line before British Rail made the decision?

Mr. Pike: I am sure that my hon. Friend's comments are absolutely right. The crux of the Bill, and the reason why I and some of my hon. Friends will oppose it, is that we believe that if the Bill were to receive its Second Reading it would be another widening of the economic imbalance between the regions of this country. I have no doubt that British Rail is aware of the Government's views. The Channel tunnel is a good example. It will involve major rail investment in the south-east.

Dr. Marek: It is important that the House realises that this investment is a matter of "either, or". It is a question of the development of the line to Stansted or of


developments elsewhere. It all has to be financed out of British Rail's capital investment, and that is subject to limits set by the Government.

Mr. Pike: That puts the point finely. We all recognise that British Rail has only a certain amount of money available for capital investment. If it invests in the Stansted line, it will not be able to invest elsewhere.
I do not criticise Mr. Speaker for not having selected the amendment, but it is unfortunate, because it would have focused attention on the parallel situation where a rail link is so essential to Manchester airport. I used to live close to the airport and Heald Green where the railway line passes.

Mr. Stephen Ross: I fully support the hon. Gentleman's complaint that the rail link into Manchester has not been proceeded with, although permission has been granted for it. Will he consider that, at some unfortunate time in the future, when I am not in the House and he might be Secretary of State for Transport, it will make sense to have the link into the airport so that the line can be constructed? That is the terrible mistake that we made at Heathrow. Here is the chance not to make a similar mistake. Why does not the hon. Gentleman back it?

Mr. Pike: The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) always makes valuable contributions on these matters. He has pointed out the difficulty with which we are faced tonight. It is with no pleasure that I oppose the Bill. I accept the logic of the hon. Gentleman's argument that if the airport is to be developed—although I believe that that is the wrong decision—it is right to have the rail link connecting it.
I have to oppose the Bill because we know that the Government will not give British Rail the necessary capital to make the other important investments that we need in other parts of the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham was right when he said that it was either this or something else. If we allow the Bill to pass, something else will be ruled out. I assure the hon. Member for Isle of Wight that it is on that basis alone that I feel that I have to oppose the Bill.
I should like to be in the position where the Government were telling British Rail to come forward with its plans for investment anywhere in the country and they would see that sufficient resources were made available to develop the rail network, whether it be new lines, new rolling stock or anything else. I believe that we should be making such investment, because it is time that the country took more traffic from the roads and encouraged it to use the railway. To do that we need positive decisions from the Government to encourage people to use the railway for long-distance freight traffic and long-distance passenger traffic. We need to encourage the growth of British Rail.
The hon. Member for Saffron Walden said that we do not know what this line would cost. He mentioned £50 million or £55 million at 1980 prices, if I have the figures correct. We all know that the figure will now be considerably higher.
We accept the hon. Gentleman's comment that this proposal is a minimum option because the line does not link up with what would perhaps be the more appropriate terminus in London, St. Pancras—it merely has the spur at the Stansted end of the line—but runs to Liverpool street station.
The Government have failed to answer the problem of dealing with the people in the central London area. We believe that developing Stansted in the way that is proposed will attract increasing numbers to the south-east of the country to make their travel arrangements. I say "attract", but perhaps that is an understatement. I believe that the Bill will force people to travel through London and through one of the three London airports. That would be regrettable. We wish to see more development of regional airports so that people can travel from the regions.
If I wish to go to Manchester airport, I have tremendous difficulty in doing so. It takes me two hours to travel 24 miles from the north of Manchester to the centre of Manchester, and I then have to catch a bus to the airport. I cannot go that short distance on a direct train. I have to change at Blackburn, and in the middle of the day it takes almost two hours to do that relatively short journey. Yet here we are talking about improving facilities and taking a line directly into Stansted airport. I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight that this is necessary if the airport is to grow. I do not dispute for one moment that that is so.
The point that I have to make repeatedly is not my opposition in principle to the proposal, but my opposition to the use of British Rail's capital investment. I believe that this is not the No. 1 priority. That is why I feel that I have to oppose the proposal. There are many more important projects for which British Rail could use that money. It would be more to the benefit of the country as a whole if British Rail could do that. Again, the Government have a key role to play. We need to see the Government giving British Rail the ability to meet the requirement to improve the rail network throughout the country.
We do not know what the final growth of Stansted will be. The hon. Member for Saffron Walden hinted at the ways in which the Government intend to get traffic to use that airport. We also know that when the White Paper was discussed the Government said that they would actively encourage the growth of charter traffic at Luton. That is different from the wording used for the regional airports. They were told, "You are on your own. We do not mind your growing, but it is up to you to do it yourself."
It is assumed that there will be large amounts of charter and scheduled traffic. We need to know exactly what type of traffic the airport will get. We must ask at what time of day people will want to use the railway. British Rail might have to run a 24-hour service to the airport for charter flights. We all know that many charter flights are at early hours in the morning, to make the maximum use of the planes, at the cheapest possible price.

Dr. Marek: If Stansted is to be developed as a charter airport, where many of the flights will come in at 2, 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning, when those people get to London they will find that the first train out of Euston to Manchester is at 10 minutes to 7, for example. What will people do for two or three hours, in the early hours of the morning? I do not think that they will use that line.

Mr. Pike: As always, my hon. Friend makes a valid point. Those problems would have to be considered.
The Bill is premature. It has been too rushed and there needs to be a more detailed study of the implications. I hope that there will be second thoughts and that the Bill will be withdrawn to allow all those implications to be considered.


I believe in rail investment. Regrettably, I have to oppose the Bill on the basis that if money is available for investment now, other cases should come ahead of the improved rail link to Stansted. The case must be established much more clearly before we allow the Bill to be approved.

Mr. Bowen Wells: At the beginning of the Bill we read:
It is the duty of the Board…to provide railway services in Great Britain and, in connection with the provision of railway services, to provide such other services and facilities as appear to the Board to be expedient, and to have due regard, as respect all those railway and other services and facilities, to efficiency, economy and safety of operation:
I should like to construct my speech round the words:
efficiency, economy and safety of operation:".
I start with efficiency. As my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst) said, the original proposal was considered by the commission of inquiry set up by the Government to investigate the possibility of establishing an airport at Stansted, under Mr. Eyre QC, the chairman. The proposal put to the commission was a double track rail link, in other words, double the size of the track between Stansted and St. Pancras. That proposal contains no improvements whatsoever to the railway line between Bishop's Stortford and Liverpool street. Therefore, in the proposal we have substituted four lines for two and St. Pancras for Liverpool street.
It was conceivable that with four tracks one could run an efficient service from Stansted airport to St. Pancras without interfering with and making worse the line between Bishop's Stortford and London, which many of my constituents use daily to get to work. My hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden described some of the indignities to which my constituents are subjected, through the appalling inefficiency and method of operation over which British Rail presides. I should have liked to invite you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to read my postbag on the subject. The letters come continually. I know that you have your own to look after, but I am sure that you would not like to read this postbag. My predecessor in the constituency, Lord Broxbourne, has had a similar experience over the years.
I understand that on the two-track line it is proposed to run four services an hour into Liverpool street from Stansted, in addition to the current load on the track which, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden, now has a low standard of efficiency.
We are asked to believe that we can run four more trains on the track from Stansted—so-called express trains, probably stopping at Tottenham Hale to connect with the London Regional Transport underground service on the Victoria line, and then going on into Liverpool street. I should like hon. Members to consider the possibility of doing that in view of British Rail's current performance. The service is not only inefficient but filthy, dirty and a disgrace to this country. On to the railway line, where we can expect services to be upwards of 10 minutes to half an hour late into Liverpool street, we shall put one of our most valued imports or exports, whichever way one looks at it—our important tourist traffic. We shall subject the tourists to the things that we have to put up with daily —the filth, dirt, inefficiency and unpunctuality.
In the proposal there is no provision for extra rolling stock, although we have been assured that rolling stock will be refurbished, which is presently running to the north-west and up the east coast main line. That will be fine for the airport passengers if the rolling stock is refurbished properly, but our experience on the line is that refurbished rolling stock and engines have a great propensity to break down.
If we need an example of that, I refer the House to the experience of Her Majesty the Queen on a recent voyage of exploration—certainly an adventure—from her home in Sandringham to Liverpool street. There is a catalogue of events. It was impossible to open the doors between the car where people were preparing her breakfast and the car in which she was sitting, so the train had to be stopped to let the person serving her get out on to the platform, go along it carrying the breakfast and then go into the Queen's dining car. That was the first stop. That train broke down five times on its journey from Sandringham to London and arrived two hours late at Liverpool street, having had two engine replacements. That illustrates the reliability of the stock that we are likely to have on the line. It will not be a good advertisement for tourists arriving at Stansted.

Mr. Hayes: My hon. Friend gave a good example of what happened to Her Majesty the Queen. Is he aware of the experience of another prominent member of the royal family, whom I shall not name, who sometimes uses that line, as I do? One evening she complained of noises in the next compartment—banging, scraping, grunts and groans. The ticket inspector went to the next compartment and found that the blinds were closed. He opened the door and found a naked couple, their bodies clothed only with a first-class ticket. It is disgraceful that members of the royal family should have to put up with that.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the House that it is not in order to call in aid members of the royal family. Hon. Members are sailing close to the wind.

Mr. Wells: I thank you for your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Mr. Hayes) illustrated the serious condition of the service.

Mr. Snape: I want to make two brief points. If matters on that line are as bad as the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Hayes) imply, should they not turn up more often at Question Time and demand greater investment from their Government?
Secondly, and without going too far out of order, can the hon. Gentleman tell me what would be the necessary level of investment to prevent naked couples cavorting on the line? That appears to be less a job for British Rail and the Government and more a figment of the imagination of the hon. Member for Harlow.

Mr. Wells: I do not think that we should pursue figments. I must tell the hon. Gentleman that we have been pursuing the question of investment with my hon. Friend the Minister, and have had some success. We have persuaded the Government to electrify the line to Cambridge, which I trust will lead to an improvement in service. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden said, there will be hand-downs from the western region, which have deteriorated in reliability because the engines are so old. However, there has been investment on that line, due in part—not to put too high a value on it—to our representations and lobbying.

Mr. Snape: The hon. Gentleman cannot have done too well in view of the chapter of misery that he is describing.

Mr. Wells: I do not accept that criticism. We have been describing the existing service—

Mr. Snape: The Government have been in power for seven years.

Mr. Wells: Unfortunately, I cannot follow all the remarks made from a sedentary position.

Mr. Snape: Sit down then, and I shall make them from the Dispatch Box. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that he is singing a familiar, albeit boring, song? His Government have been in power for seven years. If they are ever to do anything about the deterioration in the railway service in his constituency and many other constituencies, they must cough up some money. The hon. Gentleman should turn up at Question Time—as he failed to do today—and demand that they do just that.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We may have a fairly wide debate, but we cannot have a general discussion about investment.

Mr. Wells: I accept that, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I want to put the record straight. I was here during transport questions today, as I often am, because overseas development questions immediately follow.
I want to discuss British Rail investment because, presumably, it will invest in the line and the rolling stock on it. We have been successful in persuading the Government to invest in British Rail, which has resulted in electrification of the line to Cambridge and to Norwich and of the east coast main line.
I must add a cautionary word about new rolling stock, such as that which we have experienced at Hertford north, and which is relevant to the debate. We must have new rolling stock to accommodate the tourists who will be laden with luggage and therefore requiring special facilities. I have great distrust of British Rail Engineering Ltd. and its capacity to produce a reliable train. The new rolling stock on the line in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Murphy) and my constituency is very welcome compared with what we had had hitherto, which was a variety of diesel-hauled trains of pre-war vintage that blew steam into the air, broke down and were dirty. However, having put in new stock we found that the brakes and compressors were inadequate, the doors and the air conditioning did not work, the motor was too small to provide a reliable service and the carriages could not be coupled and decoupled according to design. It is thoroughly unsatisfactory new rolling stock that has seriously inconvenienced the constituents of my hon. Friend and myself.

Mr. Murphy: Does my hon. Friend accept that whereas previously, with old rolling stock, the trains arrived late, with new rolling stock they simply do not arrive?

Mr. Wells: That is right. Indeed, the whole service was suspended for a number of weeks because of the dispute with the National Union of Railwaymen about single manning. That was caused by the inefficiency of British Rail and its inability to control its staff.
The question of staff relates to efficiency, and unless BR can recruit staff that is proud of their work, wear their uniforms properly, are polite to their passengers and are

properly concerned about efficiency, reliability arid the safety of their passengers, we will not be able to offer a service to tourists of which we can be proud. Unless the line is improved, we shall drive away tourists.
I have said a great deal about the current appalling service and the sort of service to which we look forward if BR is allowed to go ahead. The figures that BR has presented to the Minister have been seriously rigged. ]hey were designed to persuade him that the rail link could be efficient, providing a 7 per cent. return on assets. Already the service has been reduced by going into Liverpool street rather than St. Pancras, and from four lines to continuing on the existing two lines. Although there will be improvements at Liverpool street, such as the lengthening of the station, the type of service anticipated will be minimal if it is to be within the forecast 7 per cent. return on assets.
We do not have any figures for rolling stock, and I understand that BR is not proposing to provide any. That means that it intends to put our tourists into trains quite unsuited to passengers with a considerable amount of luggage, who will have to suffer the filthy trains that I and my constituents suffer. That does not appear to be in the calculation, as other matters are also not in the calculation.
There are many manually operated level crossings, such as Sawbridgeworth, Stansted Abbots, Roydon and others down the line. These level crossings are a great danger to pedestrians and they hold up enormous amounts of traffic especially at Stansted Abbots and Sawbridgeworth. If the service goes ahead the level crossings will be down more than they are up to provide passengers with the additional trains from Stansted. There are no proposals to increase the efficiency of those level crossings or to build bridges over them. That is a matter of great concern for the people of Sawbridgeworth where British Rail had recently—as it calls it—modernised the line and the type of level crossing. The result is that blind people can blunder across arid get mown down by a British Rail train as there is no physical barrier to stop them. This is a serious matter and my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow did assist me in getting a hooter installed which would sound and this has helped the problem. Nonetheless, it is a danger which will be exacerbated if the frequency of trains is increased.
British Rail has said that it will merely increase the frequency of the service to the level which existed before it reduced the service. It reduced the service to my constituents because it could not sustain railway efficiency and the reliability of the service. To increase reliability—not to a great extent, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden—it reduced the number of trains on the track. If we are to return to the frequency of the past we can obviously look forward to a further serious deterioration in the reliability of the service to Liverpool street.
This line is not signalled centrally from any one station. There are several different signal boxes up the line. The system could be modernised between London and Cambridge with the installation of one signal box at Liverpool street. This would require large investment. However, if this service is to have any possibility of running on time such a signalling system must be installed. If the same tracks are to be used for the increased frequency of trains, such a signalling system must be adopted. My hon. Friend the Minister must include the cost of signalling when he looks at the return on assets. If


the Minister does not do this, he will subject my constituents and the tourists from the airport to an extremely inefficient line.
The railway stations down the line are in a terrible state of deterioration. They are unpainted and filthy. The waiting rooms are full of graffiti and unheated. They are depressing and even dangerous places for women to find themselves in late at night because of the lack of staff care at the stations. The booking clerk at Hertford east station is absent most of the time and passengers are in danger of falling through the timber floors which are now full of dry rot. The beautiful prestige arches of the entrance are often totally deserted and from time to time bricks and tiles fall off the roof. The station at Ware has been improved after several years of lobbying—we were criticised for not lobbying by the Opposition. Ware station will be rebuilt and the same is true of Stansted Abbots. The railway station at Broxbourne, which is used by many of my constituents, is an absolute disgrace. It has a dangerous car park-full of heaps of coal. It is a draughty station at which the indicators do not work. The whole of the indicator system is totally outmoded and inefficient. The new indicator system installed on the Hertford north line does not work—British Rail has to get a new computer to make it work. Even with the installation of such modern equipment, one does not have much faith that British Rail will maintain it and that people will know which train they should get on. This will be especially difficult for tourists who cannot speak the language. Indeed my own constituents, who speak the language, still get on the wrong train because of the faulty indicators.

Dr. Marek: I really cannot allow the hon. Gentleman's comments to pass without saying that the answer to all this is to increase the number of staff of British Rail so that they could be present on the platform to give personal service and to ensure that tourists and strangers know exactly what is going on. I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman but there is an easy remedy.

Mr. Wells: I am not sure that British Rail is in control of its staff at railway stations. There are plenty of staff but at Hertford north most are found in the pub next door. If one manages to get the staff out of the pub and if they are coherent, they may be able to say what is happening on the line, that is if they know what is happening on the line. If one gets an answer one is lucky. It is not a question of additional staff but it is a question of motivation. The staff must be willing to give a proper service, keep the station clean and look after passengers.
I would like to sum up by considering the question of the return on assets.

Mr. David Mitchell: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. He has chronicled a sad story in relation to his local line. Can he tell me whether he has taken the matter up with British Rail and what answers he has received?

Mr. Wells: I have been continuously—indeed before I was elected—haunting those filthy, paint-peeling offices in Liverpool street and the offices at Kings Cross on these matters for the past 10 years. I am afraid I have achieved little. We got new rolling stock that did not work as well as the other incidents I have chronicled. I have

been in touch with every area manager. I have arranged for speakers from British Rail to speak to the Rail User's Club to explain why the services are so bad. I did not bother with this this autumn because the rail service had totally finished on the Hertford north line. I thought it would be too embarrassing to ask British Rail officials to come to meet a number of my enraged constituents. I have been continuously in touch with British Rail but there is little it can do unless it has control of its staff, is more efficient and is determined to succeed. All of these ingredients are absent from the present line.
My hon. Friend the Minister knows Liverpool street station. I think it is one of the filthiest railway terminals in London, if not in the whole country. The toilets on that station are indescribable. This is the place in which we will land a large number of tourists. I direct the Minister's attention to Tottenham Hale, the station at which the train from Stansted will stop. Can one imagine carrying heavy baggage down the endless steps at that station into the underground? It is ludicrous and this rail link will not work in the way that British Rail has proposed to the Minister.
I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to accept an invitation from me to come on this line and travel from Liverpool street perhaps at 5.30 pm one evening. He can then experience the delays and listen to the remarks of my constituents about the line and the way it operates. I hope that the Minister will be fortified because my constituents have reached the stage of enragement, when they are not polite about the matter.

Mr. David Mitchell: I would be very happy to do so. It is always my intention and part of my work to keep in touch with the service that is provided. I and the management would like to know more about the conditions my hon. Friend has talked about.

Mr. Wells: My hon. Friend is being sold a pup. The line cannot operate efficiently without taking into account the cost of new signalling and rolling stock, the repair of stations, indicators and track, and the traction engines. At present there are at least three forms of traction engine on that line, all running at different speeds. One of them is designed to be an express train. When they are stopped, as they are, they overheat and have to be taken out of service. That problem is quite apart from that caused by the breakdown of the diesel motors, which the Queen experienced and to which I have referred, and will quickly pass over in view of your direction, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
I have spoken of the inefficiency of the service and I need say no more beyond hoping that I will have the opportunity to show my hon. Friend how appalling it is. Instead, let me deal with Manchester, Heathrow and Gatwick. Before I am ruled out of order, let me say that it is relevant because the rail link will encourage passengers to use Stansted instead of Manchester. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Silvester) will be able to enlighten the House still further on this. That is what the British Airports Authority has in mind, as does British Rail.
The Gatwick to Victoria line has made British Rail a lot of money and it has encouraged it to go in for the Stansted link. However, I cannot understand why British Rail is so enthusiastic about building a railway line to Stansted which will probably have fewer than 8 million passengers per annum by 1995 and yet it refuses to put proposals before my hon. Friend the Minister to build a


line to Heathrow, which is seriously needed because of the congestion on the roads in west London, which all hon. Members will have had the misfortune to experience.
For some extraordinary reason British Rail refuses to put forward the proposal for a rail link to Heathrow, yet it is essential for our tourist traffic and the efficient running of London. Nor do we have such a proposal for Manchester. My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest (Mr. McNair-Wilson) has obtained the planning permission but British Rail will not put forward the proposal. The reason is that the Department of Transport is determined, as it always has been, to develop a huge and unnecessary airport at Stansted. I shall not go into the pros and cons of that because we have had a debate on it and opposition to that has been defeated. None the less, this is a clear attempt to try to divert traffic from Gatwick, Manchester and other northern airports into Stansted in order to build up its throughput quickly so that the BAA can get a return on its investment as quickly as possible and conform with what have been described as transparent transactions between the London airports, which will probably be so transparent as to be invisible to the naked eye or to anybody else who is curious about how Stansted will be made to pay. I shall leave my hon. Friend the Member for Withington to elaborate on the inequities of the problem of Manchester.
Then there is the problem of the agricultural viability of the land which will be bifurcated by the two lines, one from Cambridge into Stansted and one from Stansted on to the main line. There are serious environmental consequences for my constituents who enjoy using the footpaths and the beautiful countryside which will be destroyed. Woodland and the Tye Green Brook valley will be destroyed by the line.
The line is destined to be a disgrace to Britain unless we make the investment necessary to make it run properly and efficiently. That means efficient rolling stock, the cleaning up of the railway stations, the cleaning up and greater efficiency of Liverpool street and proper modern signalling. If those are provided we might have an efficient service for the commuter, which is desperately needed, and for the additional tourist traffic that will be generated. On British Rail's present proposal there is no way in which that will be achieved. My hon. Friend will live to regret the day that he ever approved the line because of the stream of complaints from tourists and their consequent decline in numbers on this miserable, dirty and inefficient railway line.

Mr. Robert Litherland: The hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) discussed filthy toilets, naked people cavorting, drunken staff and so on, and I was a little surprised to hear him mention Manchester in passing. It is the real fear of what could happen not only to Manchester but to other regional airports that brings me here to oppose the Bill tonight. As has been said, it is regrettable that we have to do that.
The hon. Member for New Forest (Mr. McNair-Wilson) tried to say that the Bill would not be unfair to Manchester, but he failed to allay our fears that it could have repercussions for the regional airports. The hon. Gentleman is shaking his head and we have had the same argument in the past.

Mr. Patrick McNair-Wilson: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman heard me, but I said that in 1984 we

had an exactly comparable Bill which provided the same facilities for a link with Manchester. Such Bills are not designed suddenly to sanction the building; they are taking powers to enable the board to build when the finance is available. Manchester already has that facility.

Mr. Litherland: We might ask when, because to us it does not seem to be forthcoming. That does not allay our fears or convince us that the effect on Manchester or the regional airports will not be disastrous. We do have doubts and reservations.

Dr. Marek: If the Bill is enacted, British Rail will have the possibility of doing both or neither. In practice it will do one because it wants to build the line to Stansted, not to Manchester. That is why many hon. Members are opposing the Bill tonight. ft is a question of either/or, and if we allow this one, Manchester will not get its rail link.

Mr. Litherland: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That is what we are arguing about. We are going into uncharted waters. Those of us who live north of Watford know the depression in the north-west and in the north of England and cannot take any chances. It is regrettable but we must oppose the Bill because we still have doubts and reservations. The Bill is a sign that Stansted is to be developed to the detriment of Manchester and other airports, and we cannot get away from that.
The Standing Committee debating the Airports Bill has a consistent theme—Stansted. That is our greatest worry. That theme has continued since Second Reading. We fear that Stansted could: be extended and developed at the expense of regional airports, especially Manchester international airport. This Bill fans the flames of our fear that the development at Stansted will proceed by stealth. On the Manchester proposal for a rail link we were informed in the White Paper:
The Government will consider the project on the same terms as the rail link to Stansted and will be glad to approve the investment if it is justified.
Therefore, Manchester believes that the Secretary of State should publish the Stansted submission, so that the House can be satisfied about the viability of the proposals The Secretary of State should receive and publish the submission on the Manchester link, so that the House can be satisfied that both submissions will be determined on equal terms. All that we have been asking is that we should be able to compete with other airports on the same terms. We believe that the rail link and the infrastructure around Stansted will be detrimental to the north of England.
The viability of such investment is suspect. It has been assumed that Stansted could accommodate about 4 million passengers in the year 1988 and up to 15 million passengers in 1992. It took Gatwick 22 years to reach 9 million passengers. It has been assumed that the rail share of the airport traffic will be 40 per cent., and that a high proportion of passengers using the link will originate in the regions outside the south-east. On the original, dedicated link we discussed an estimated cost of £166 million and whether that cost could be financially justified. British Rail has confirmed that subsidy would be required for some considerable time and that is our worry. We believe that it would be an unfair and hidden subsidy.
Following the Government's decision to limit grant at Stansted to about 7 million to 8 million passengers per annum, it took British Rail and the BAA only a few months to submit proposals to the Government—details


of which the Secretary of State has refused to make public. However, it is understood that the link relates solely to the rail spur and that the dedicated link will not be pursued for the time being.
British Rail and the BAA lost no time in submitting their proposals for investment and the Secretary of State has played his cards—as many Conservative Members have said—very close to his chest in providing details of the proposals. We believe that the cost of those proposals would be about £45 million to £50 million. It is also understood that British rail is satisfied that the project is viable, but that has not been proved during the debate. The assessment is made on the basis of traffic figures compiled by the BAA and a "modal split" produced by British Rail. Traffic build-up figures are unknown. It is clear that much traffic will be required and that the BAA must have made assumptions about that, which we believe are likely to be optimistic.
It has been assumed that all American charter traffic will be transferred to Stansted. There has been a failure to recognise the fact that Manchester will be competing for that traffic. Yet it is supposed to be Government policy to disperse tourist activities to the regions. If Manchester airport is to cater successfully, it is important that access of all modes of transport is improved. The rail link is the natural step for the development of Manchester airport, given its international gateway status. It is important that the airport can exploit the potential of its catchment area of Scotland, Yorkshire and the midlands and that the airport can compete effectively for incoming tourist traffic, especially long-haul traffic.
British Rail's work on the viability of the Manchester link is proceeding, but progress is slow. British Rail is assessing the link not on the basis that Manchester is a gateway airport, but on the basis that it is a regional airport. That is a misnomer and a fallacy that arises in all the arguments about regional airports compared with London airports. Manchester is a hub airport and is recognised by the Government as being a gateway airport.
In 1981 in the town hall in Manchester we set up a northern consortium, because of our fear—it has been called a paranoic fear—regarding the north of England and the south-east of England. Different complexions of political input were expressed by the trade unions, local authorities, north-west authorities, northern authorities, north-east authorities, chambers of commerce, chambers of trade and by other regional airports that are complementary to Manchester. The tourist organisations contributed to our claims that Stansted will affect Manchester. There was tremendous enthusiasm at the meeting and the single thread was the importance of regional airports to the north. We are frightened about the great divide between the north and south, the predominance of the south-east and the fact that we are becoming a country of two nations, which has been expressed time and again.
We recognise that any growth of Stansted will widen the gap of the social and economic differences that prevail between the north and the south-east of England. Nothing that has been said tonight has allayed the real fear of the further extension by stealth. The full extension and development of Stansted would be catastrophic to the

region. Everything appears to be going the way of the south-east of England, including the new road infrastructure.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) asked the Secretary of State for Transport if he would publish the list that he had received of highway improvement schemes from Hertfordshire and Essex county councils relating to the expansion of Stansted airport, together with the estimated cost, when they were available to him, and if he would indicate his response to the request that those schemes would be funded by additional capital allocations to the councils concerned. The Secretary of State replied that Hertfordshire and Essex councils were proposing roads and infrastructure to the tune of £38 million. The Minister referred to a sum of £2 million. The Secretary of State then stated that he was willing to meet representatives of both councils to discuss those and other proposals. He said that he would not speculate on the outcome and continued:
We shall take into account any proposals for capital expenditure on local roads when the Councils submit their Transport Policies and Programmes for future years." —[Official Report, 10 February 1986; Vol. 91, c. 313–4.]
Once again the Secretary of State is playing his cards close to his chest.
With the investment in new roads, new towns, the Channel tunnel and the progressive extension of Stansted, there is a rosy future for the south-east, but not for the north and north-west, especially the construction industry there. The north has seen a massive decline in its manufacturing industry, ports and coalfields. It has little going for it. In my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd) male unemployment stands at about 60 per cent. Manchester airport is not a panacea to all those ills, but if it declines our area will be dramatically affected.
As manufacturing has declined, we have tried to promote tourism, but the Bill will affect tourism in the north-west. As Manchester airport continues to develop as an alternative hub airport with a wide range of frequent services, it will compete increasingly with the London airports for a large proportion of regional traffic. It is already relevant that the London airports compete fairly with Manchester airport, but it will become more significant in future. We are merely asking for fair competition. The hidden heavy subsidy for Stansted will certainly affect Manchester
A point which is often ignored in aviation debates is that about 10 million incoming foreign passengers are forced to use London airports. That element of demand is forecast to increase significantly in the years ahead, and will represent an increasingly high proportion of future London traffic. At present London accounts for more than 90 per cent. of incoming tourists who travel to the United Kingdom by air. In future the figure will at least remain static. Many of those tourists have no choice but to travel to London. They do not all want to travel to London and, indeed, 40 per cent. of all their nights are spent outside the south-east. That is because it is Government policy to promote solely London's interests abroad. A further reason is the Government's failure to realise that the structure of the nation's tourist industry is unsuitable for the job in hand.
All the tourist attractions advertised abroad are centred on London. The heritage trail starts in London and the south-east, goes to the Cotswolds, and then to Stratford


to experience Shakespeare. Tourism should be spread to the north-west which has a great deal to offer. There is the beauty of the lake district, the Yorkshire dales, Derbyshire and Cheshire. Moreover, Scotland, Wales and the north of England are becoming increasingly attractive to tourists. Local authorities and other agencies are making considerable efforts to capitalise on existing attractions and to develop new ones. Manchester is sending our representatives to do a public relations job abroad, in America in particular, to tell people that the north-west has much to offer, whether it be the Beamish open air museum, the Maryport Harbour development, the north Pennines tourism growth point, the Merseyside maritime—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is straying now. He was in order when he was talking about the provisions in the Bill. He must relate his remarks to the Bill.

Mr. Litherland: I accept your ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am trying to make comparisons between what we have to offer and how the Bill will affect us, whether in tourism, hotel occupancy or anything else.
The former chairman of the British Tourist Association, Sir Henry Marking, said:
If, as the people of London and of many places in the South of England will readily affirm, London is already full, perhaps overfull, with tourists for most of the year, and if tourism earnings are to grow, visitors must be encouraged to visit increasingly the splendidly attractive places in England, Wales and Scotland. Use of a Northern Gateway would help to ensure this and would spread more evenly throughout Britain the tourist traffic and prosperity and employment which tourist traffic brings in its wake.
This is our argument. Any extension of the infrastructure, whether in road, rail links or airports, will have an effect on what we see as the saving grace in the north-west, the service industry, which is standing in in place of the massive decline in manufacturing. We shall raise our voices against anything that might have repercussions against our tourism sector.
What is required is a change of direction in Government policy of the kind clearly identified in the recent report of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, "Promotion of the Regions Abroad". It recommends a simplified structure for promoting tourism. The development of what we described as an open jaws policy, whereby one end of the journey is through the London airport system, is not acceptable to the north-west. We see the rail link as apart of that system. We shall oppose the Bill because it will be detrimental to Manchester airport and the regions.

Mr. Fred Silvester: I should this evening have been joining some colleagues in Hong Kong, where the opening of the new British Airways scheduled service between Manchester and Hong Kong is being celebrated. My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale (Sir F. Montgomery) and the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris), who have continued on the journey, wish to be associated with what I shall say.
I feel that it is important to be here to speak against the Bill, not because I think that it should not eventually receive a Second Reading, but because I think that it should not receive a Second Reading tonight. It is important that we should understand why. The process of

a private Bill—I draw the attention of my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest (Mr. McNair-Wilson) to this —involves negotiation between those who object to the Bill and the promoters. In this instance, British Rail has not pursued that process with anything like the vigour that it should have done.
There are two essential ingredients to the problem in the north-east for those who speak on the Manchester beat. First, we are asked to approve a rail development in the south-east for which there is inadequate information and the calculations for which have been withheld from public view. The first demand was for the information upon which the Bill is based to be made public. That has not happened. Secondly, the Bill is based on a clear statement of Government policy, which was that the two rail links should be considered on an equal basis and that they should be analysed and presented to the Government for a decision on an equal basis. That has not happened, either.
British Rail has produced figures which show that it regards the extension to Stansted as a business opportunity and that it is based upon greatly optimistic interpretations of Government policy. However, British Rail has been dragging its feet in Manchester. It has put forward a number of obstacles and has not managed to get even to the starting gate. British Rail ought to be asked why the Secretary of State for Transport has had its proposals for Stansted on his desk since November 1985, although he will be lucky if he receives its proposals for Manchester by May 1986.

Mr. Bowen Wells: Reference has been made to the White Paper, "Airports Policy", Cmnd. 9542. There is also the Government's undertaking about Heathrow. The White Paper says:
The Government has therefore decided to commission urgently a study of the options for improving surface access to Heathrow: by easing the capacity problems of the A4–M4 corridor; the possibility of a BR link to Heathrow; and the scope for improvements to the Piccadilly line underground service.
None of those proposals is yet before the Minister, yet the Stansted proposal is in front of him.

Mr. Silvester: Yes. I understand that that is even further down the track. Equality seems to be a very malleable substance. British Rail does not deserve the Bill, and I hope that it will not get it. Whether British Rail gets it later depends on how it proceeds. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross), who has now left the Chamber, passionately asked the House to back the Bill. However, we should not back it tonight because the basis for backing it does not exist, although it may be provided at a later stage.
The basis of the Government's policy is clear. An agreement was reached last year. It was understood that there would be equality of treatment in respect of the rail link, that there would be no subsidy for the operation at Stansted and that there would be no direction of traffic to Stansted. Without that agreement there is no basis for putting at risk all the people who will be affected by the Bill. The British Railways Act 1984 was passed on the basis of everybody, apart from one major objector, being willing to accept it. They were anxious for a rail link. Local resistance to the development of the link was minimal. The Stansted Bill involves substantial powers of compulsory purchase. It is not greeted with universal applause. Therefore, to quote one Bill as justification for another is absurd.

Mr. Patrick McNair-Wilson: It is obvious that my hon. Friend has but slight knowledge of private Bills. All private Bills have petitions against them, and all of them are considered in detail. I assure him that the 1984 Bill was considered in detail, too.

Mr. Silvester: My hon. Friend is undoubtedly right that all Bills of this kind attract petitions against them. One has to make a judgment about the importance of the local opposition. However, I doubt whether he would find it tenable to express the view either in Manchester or in the Stansted area that the opposition in Manchester is not very much weaker than that which he will find in the Stansted area. An interesting feature of the Bill is that it involves a rail spur from the main line into the airport, continuing otherwise with the existing infrastructure. This was option B presented to the Eyre report which had some rude things to say about it.
Chapter 16, paragraph 5.20 of that report said:
The BRB made it plain that Options A, B and D were opposed. BRB went so far as to indicate that the mere construction of a rail link without additional infrastructure as contemplated by Option B would be worse in operational terms than no spur at all.…Other users of the existing services to and from Liverpool Street could be adversely affected if Option B were adopted.
Suddenly all that is gone. Suddenly this horror of option B has disappeared. The reason is clear. British Rail and the British Airports Authority were faced with the decision that they were able to get out of the House—the development to 8 million passengers per year and not to 15 million, rising to 25 million, as originally contemplated.
So British Rail now proposes to include in the proposals for the Stansted link generous assumptions—for example, that the proportion likely to use the line to travel to Stansted will be 30 per cent. of airport traffic or more. The equivalent figure for the Manchester link is said to be about 6 per cent. No one suggests that we would reach the 30 or 40 per cent. figure—which comes from Gatwick —but Manchester will certainly reach between 10 and 12 per cent.
The differences in calculation show a remarkable dragging of the feet. I have a summary or preliminary appraisal of the proposed link with Manchester international airport in which a number of possible options are considered. One says that there should be no action, but that which is most favoured says that the link will produce a negative value of £14 million and a discounted infrastructure cost of £22 million. That is based upon the assumption that the rail link to Manchester would go from Piccadilly and not involve the original loop. I shall not go into detail, because we are talking about Stansted. The route would go from Manchester to Wilmslow and utilise only the Blackpool and Liverpool services.
What British Rail has to say about another option is interesting because it would carry the trans-Pennine trains through to Manchester airport—the obvious thing to do. However, British Rail says that it must take into account "the diversion revenue penalties". In other words, because of its plans for the trans-Pennine link between Yorkshire and Liverpool, it is deducting the benefits to the airport because it says that it would lose revenue from traffic that would otherwise go on to Liverpool.
We are faced with a simple proposition on which the honour of the Government and the integrity of British Rail are at stake. I make no bones about it. Whatever is said

in public, there is no doubt in my mind that we were clearly to understand, both here and in Manchester, that the link to Manchester airport and the link to Stansted would be considered simultaneously with the same vigour and determination and on the same basis, with the same commercial criteria being applied. That promise has not been fulfilled. The indications are that that promise is not to be fulfilled. The Minister is a kind man and he shakes his head, but until he can assure me that a British Rail proposal is on his desk I shall take a lot of convincing.
The costing is quite awry. The latest proposals, which have been worked out by the Manchester airports authority, show that, including the trans-Pennine interchange, which BR leaves out, the revenue estimate is close to the original estimate put out by BR's consultants. Those consultants have shown the Manchester link to be a viable proposition, but BR has nibbled away at it like rats in the hay to ensure that it is not.
My hon. Friend the Minister of State shakes his head. I am glad to see that, but I should be much happier if, when he stops shaking his head and rises to reply, he could give me a clear assurance that the proposal is on its way and that the basis of calculation includes a realistic appraisal of bringing traffic into Manchester airport from the whole of the north of England. That is the essential ingredient on which the whole of this agreement was based. I urge him to take the matter extremely seriously.

Mr. Peter Snape: I do not intend to detain the House for more than a few minutes as the debate has illustrated opposed private business with a vengeance. With the exception of the hon. Member for New Forest (Mr. McNair-Wilson), every right hon. and hon. Member has been hostile to the Bill, to say the least. The reason is not hard to find.
The hon. Member for New Forest said that there is no connection between the railway line that the Bill proposes for Stansted and that approved in 1984, when he and I were present, for the railway line to Manchester airport. I accept that the hon. Gentleman believes that there is no connection but, regrettably from his point of view and, perhaps, from British Rail's point of view, nobody else does. Certainly no hon. Member who has participated today believes it. There is a strong feeling that there is an imbalance of treatment as between Stansted and Manchester. Stansted is presumably being made more attractive in the run-up to the privatisation of the British Airports Authority, and other airports are being left to fend for themselves.
The official BR view is that the two projects should be considered on exactly the same terms and that, presumably, decisions will be made accordingly. The same view was expressed in the White Paper. The Government have not exactly come clean, however. In reply to a written question from me and in reply to questions asked by other right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House, the Secretary of State has covered himself with the cloak of commercial confidentiality in regard to the rail link to Stansted airport. None of us understand that. The criteria for such projects have always been fairly widely published previously. It has always been clear on which criteria such schemes have been judged. That is not so here—there is evidently some commercial confidentiality.


The hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst) talked about the necessary 7 per cent. rate of return. He understandably asked about such costs as the tunnel under the runway, signalling and station buildings. He made a plea, which was echoed by some of his hon. Friends, that if and when the Bill goes through, if and when the line is built and if and when the trains are introduced, they will, unlike most trains on the line, run to time. The hon. Member for Saffron Walden said that the Secretary of State would intervene to make the airport a success. One can understand the unwillingness of all hon. Members to believe the Government when they say that they will operate the same hands-off approach on this project as they have operated on others.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Litherland) said, the criteria for not putting forward the Blackpool electrification was rather confusing. I understand my hon. Friend's confusion, which was mirrored throughout the north-west. I saw newspaper reports which said that the Department of Transport had rejected British Rail's application.

Mr. David Mitchell: No, it did not.

Mr. Snape: I accept what the Minister of State says, but I must tell him that the Manchester Evening News reported that the Department of Transport had rejected the application. Whether or not it was rejected—and if the Minister of State says that it was never put to him, then we must accept that—the Opposition would doubt whether the same criteria would apply to that scheme as applied to the railway line into Stansted.
The hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) had some harsh words to say about the line and the way that it is operated at present. Filthy, dirty and inefficient were just three of the epithets he awarded to the present system. He criticised virtually everybody. He criticised British Rail Engineering Limited for what he said was faulty train design. British Rail Engineering Limited has been building these trains for many years. It normally builds them to the specification of the region placing the order. Presumably it did that in connection with the eastern region rolling stock which is used on the line which the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford mentioned.
The hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford and some of his hon. Friends complained about the frequency of service in the existing system and questioned whether the line would be able to cope. The hon. Gentleman said the line could not cope now, and that is before any additional trains enter service. It is not for me to defend British Rail's senior management. I must confess that, having spent some years working in the industry, I have no great faith in it. In my customary attempt to be fair, however, I must point out that the management proposes to redevelop Liverpool street station and I presume that that redevelopment will include some degree of re-signalling which might go some way to easing some of the problems that the hon. Gentleman complained about.
If it is true, as the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford suggested, that staff were conspicuous by their absence—and he referred, without providing a shred of evidence, to people spending their time in pubs and not therefore being around to run the existing service—I must tell the hon. Gentleman that as one who is sponsored by the major railway union I hold no brief for that conduct. If that happens, that is a direct failure of management.
Whether or not the rail link is built, and although I disagree with much of what the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford said, I must admit that I travel on the railway frequently, as the hon. Gentleman no doubt does. I must say that railway management is conspicious by its absence after six o'clock in the evening, particularly at weekends. So long as uniformed supervisory staff is withdrawn and replaced by administrators in tower blocks at major administrative centres, the decline in railway services to which the hon. Gentleman referred is likely to continue. Indeed, whether or not the rail link is built, we may well not see any great improvement in service standards unless the change to which the hon. Gentleman and I would be committed takes place.

Mr. Bowen Wells: The hon. Gentleman claimed that I have made certain statements without a shred of evidence to support them. I am not accustomed to doing that, especially when some of my constituents are railway employees. I would not want to cast aspersions on them unnecessarily. The fact is that I know that what I have said takes place. I happened to go to the bar at which railway staff were imbibing at a time when trains were not arriving at the station. It seemed a pleasant way to pass the time but it was not one which was consistent with their duties, as the hon. Gentleman has said.

Mr. Snape: I shall not be especially impressed by the hon. Gentleman's assertions unless he proves to be more of an expert on railway uniforms than he has proved to be on rolling stock and locomotives. Does he know whether those who he saw in the bar were on duty? Does he know their grades, and has he knowledge of what they are doing at any one time? If that which he describes takes place, I do not condone it. If it does, the railway management should take steps to prevent it happening. It seems from the questions of the Minister of State that the hon. Gentleman has not complained to Ministers, whoever else he has complained to over the years. Ministers are nominally responsible. That is evidenced by the Minister asking the hon. Gentleman what complaints he had made locally and regionally about the line.
I do not envy the task of the hon. Member for New Forest. Although he has not convinced anyone so far, he must seek to convince a majority of the House, even at this late hour, to support the Bill. I would find it a matter of personal regret if the House rejected any proposal to build a railway line. Far too many lines have been closed over the years. However, British Rail and the Government have failed palpably to make a reasonable case for any degree of investment priority to be given to the project that is set out in the Bill, especially if that priority were to be at the expense of more worthy projects in other parts of the country.

The Minister of State, Department of Transport (Mr. David Mitchell): It may be helpful if at this stage I intervene to give a brief indication of the Government's view of the Bill. Before I go any further, I take up part of the speech of the hon. Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape). The hon. Gentleman spoke about the electrification of the line from Manchester to Blackpool and said that local newspapers carried a report that it had been rejected by the Government. If they did so, I hope that they will recognise that that report was a considerable


distortion. I trust that they will print corrections and give them the same prominence as the original articles. British Rail is able to provide a service virtually as fast and as efficient, with its new sprinter rolling stock—and at lower cost—than that which has been provided by electrification. British Rail did not propose that the line should be electrified.
The Government have considered the contents of the Bill and have no objection in principle to the powers sought by the British Railways Board. Only one minor point has been raised in correspondence with the promoters and I have no reason to doubt that this will be cleared up satisfactorily.
The airports policy White Paper, Cmnd. 9542, which was debated and approved by the House last June, announced the Government's decisions on the case for developing Stansted airport. The BAA has been given outline planning permission for expansion of the airport to 15 million passengers per annum, but the first phase of the development is to be restricted to 7 million to 8 million passengers per annum. Expansion, if any, beyond that level will be subject to parliamentary approval.
Against that background, British Rail was invited to study, in consultation with the BAA, what rail link to Stansted would be financially justified in the light of the traffic forecasts and phasing proposals discussed in the White Paper. The White Paper made clear the Government's willingness to approve investment in a rail link to Stansted if it can be financially justified.
In response to the Government's invitation the railways board put forward an investment submission in November last year for a spur from the Liverpool street-Cambridge main line to a new railway station beneath the proposed new airport terminal building.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is at present considering the board's investment proposal. He is also considering proposals from the BAA for the first phase of the expansion of the airport submitted to him last October. He hopes to be able to announce decisions on both BAA and BR proposals before very long.
The Bill would give the railways board power to proceed with the construction of the link. If investment approval is given, its intention is that the link will be operational by the financial year 1990–91.
My hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst) asked me whether I am willing to be persuaded that a rail link would be for the general benefit of users. He then asked why there was nothing similar for Heathrow. The same issue was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells). The Government undertook in the White Paper to commission a study of the options for improving surface access to Heathrow, including the possibility of a BR rail link to the airport. A shortlist of consultants is being interviewed and an announcement about a commission can be expected shortly. I hope that will satisfy my hon. Friend.

Mr. Bowen Wells: May I ask my hon. Friend why it has taken so long to get to the stage of appointing a consultant when, as he says, British Rail had a proposition on his desk in November 1985? That is surely a quite unacceptable delay on the part of I do not know who.

Mr. Mitchell: There are considerable problems about Heathrow where one is dealing with the M4–M3 corridor.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford knows that there is a long history of considering such opportunities in the past and then having them rejected. We are anxious to ensure that there is a full assessment of the wider opportunities to improve traffic within that corridor. My hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden asked whether the provision of the railway would have an accelerating effect on the growth of passenger traffic at Stansted. I am advised that growth in demand at Stansted will result from facilities at Heathrow and Gatwick reaching capacity. It is generally recognised that that is the largest single factor. My hon. Friend also raised the financial case and I shall come back to that.
I should like to deal with the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Silvester) about the possibility of a rail link to Manchester airport. It has been suggested that before legislation is passed giving British Rail powers to construct a rail link to Stansted, further progress should be made over the Manchester airport link. The British Railways Board already has the necessary statutory powers under the British Railways Act 1984 to construct a rail link to Manchester airport. Following last year's airport policy White Paper, the local authorities, the airport authority and British Rail were invited to analyse the case for providing a direct link to Manchester airport.
The White Paper made it clear that the Government will consider the Manchester project on the same terms as the rail link to Stansted airport. In the case of Stansted, we have an investment submission. In the case of Manchester, as yet no submission has come forward but I can assure the House that the Manchester rail link scheme will be considered in no less favourable terms than the Stansted one. The criteria will be no less favourable for the consideration of the Manchester investment project.

Mr. Silvester: Will my hon. Friend explain why it is that, although the submission for Stansted was on his right hon. Friend's desk in November, I am told by British Rail that the earliest we can expect a submission about Manchester is in May this year? Why is that regarded as equal treatment?

Mr. Mitchell: There are a number of additional complexities in the Manchester submission. In the case of Stansted there is one direct line from the airport to one major town destination. At Manchester there is a diversity of destinations, and work has to be done on assessing the destinations to which passengers go from Manchester airport, because they do not all go to Manchester. It is for that reason and for none of the reasons about which my hon. Friend has dark suspicions that there has been a delay in coming forward with the proposition.
My hon. Friend suggested that the House is being asked to approve a British Rail investment without sufficient information. He also said that the Stansted investment proposition will be considered on a more favourable basis than the proposed Manchester link. I assure my hon. Friend that the House is not being asked to consider a BR investment. That is a job for Ministers. I assure my hon. Friend that we shall consider no less favourably the criteria for Manchester than we consider those for Stansted. Naturally, I shall look carefully at his trans-Pennine point when we come to deal with it.
I am as anxious as my hon. Friend the Member for Withington, if a financially sound case exists for


Manchester, for it to he brought forward as quickly as possible, but the initiative lies with the local authorities and BR, and I can only urge them to press on together with their analyses.
My hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden raised questions about the financial case and the suspicion that the link will be justified only if it carried more than 8 million passengers. The Bill provides statutory powers to undertake the scheme. Investment approval will be needed for the powers to be implemented. It is usual to obtain statutory approval first. The White Paper makes it clear that the link must be financially justified with the phasing set down in the White Paper—with 7 million to 8 million passengers. British Rail has submitted an investment proposal which we are considering.
My hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden then raised a series of questions on the viability of BR's proposed investment. This is a BR investment which the Government have called in for careful examination. This proposition has been with officials since November. They have sought clarification on a number of details. The proposition has just arrived on my desk, and I shall need to ask a number of further questions. I shall seek to deal with this in as businesslike a manner as I can, but I cannot say how soon I shall be able to recommend a decision to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.

Mr. Haselhurst: Will my hon. Friend offer some further guidance? Does he recall that consideration at departmental level of the proposal to electrify the line from Bishop's Stortford to Cambridge took several years? Will this rather more expensive scheme take a similar period?

Mr. Mitchell: If my hon. Friend refers to any investment proposition that has come from British Rail since I have had responsibility in this matter, I can only say that none of those proposals has been kept waiting for years. Indeed, some have been turned round in as short a time as three weeks. I would hesitate to think that I could turn this one round within that time scale.
I have been asked why it has not been possible for the Government to announce a decision on the British Railways Board's investment so far. A number of details have to be discussed with BR, and I have already referred to that point. The board will not be able to proceed with construction of the rail link without approval of the investment proposal but, as with any major scheme for new infrastructure, statutory powers are needed.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford referred to services on his line. I repeat the assurance that I would accept an invitation from him to see them. My hon. Friend has raised this matter with BR management. The Government have given BR objectives, which include running attractive, clean and punctual services. My hon. Friend went on to say that he believed that the attraction of using this line may add to the attraction of using Stansted. I think that there is a certain incompatibility between those two parts of his speech.
The hon. Members for Wrexham (Dr. Marek) and for Burnley (Mr. Pike) claimed that BR should spend its resources on other railway lines. That is a matter for the management of BR. In the case of Stansted, we shall not expect to subsidise the service. We shall expect BR to make a 7 per cent. return on its investment. If the hon. Members for Wrexham and for Burnley know of other

investments that BR can make with a similar return. I hope that they will let the board know as soon as possible and copy their letters to me.
There are three petitions against the Bill and the petitioners will have the opportunity to present their objections to the Select Committee. I therefore recommend to the House that the Bill be given a Second Reading and be allowed to proceed in the usual way to Committee for detailed consideration. It is quite clear from what some hon. Members have said that there will be a great deal of detailed consideration and I believe that the House should allow the Bill to go forward in that way.

Mr. Tony Lloyd: This has been a long and, for the most part, interesting debate. Obviously the overwhelming view of the House is that the Bill should not go ahead. Nothing that the Minister said has allayed the fears of those who have spoken. We are caught by a twin difficulty. One is British Rail's apparent near paranoia in refusing to develop a rail link to Manchester airport. Its refusal to develop that link rests on the fact that it is greatly concerned about the potential loss of traffic on the Manchester to London route. I and my hon. Friends feel that that fear is grossly misguided. The second difficulty is the desire of the Government to push ahead with the rail link to Stansted in order to make that airport viable far ahead of its time. That is part of their global airport policy, which is almost independent of the need for a direct rail link to Stansted.
I do not think that it is fanciful to suggest that at least partly in the Government's mind is the view that British Rail should fund the link to Stansted and that the link should be well on its way when the Government wish to flog off Stansted, thus increasing the airport's capital value. That is a significant point to which the House should address itself. Is it right that public money—the money British Rail spends is provided by the taxpayer —should be spent to develop and increase the asset base of the British Airports Authority so as to increase the price that the Government will obtain on privatisation? It would be unacceptable to hon. Members from northern constituencies if, in so doing, the Government directly jeopardised the future of Manchester airport and of a national airports policy.
It would also be unacceptable for the Government again to invest in infrastructure in one region when British Rail is constrained by the external financing limit imposed upon it by central Government. It is a simple fact that the money could not be spent on other schemes. For example, the Minister has commented about the charge in connection with the electrification of the Blackpool to Manchester line. I do not believe that there is no discussion between the Department of Transport and British Rail. I know that it was the Department of Transport, not BR, which sent out letters announcing the decision to Members of Parliament who were concerned about the issue. The Department of Transport was intimately concerned in that decision. This is not the time to explain the need for a fully electrified railway system in the north-west, linking it to the national railway system, for reasons of the local economy as well as for an efficient transportation system. However, because of a Government decision, one area of the north-west is being denied infrastructure investment while the south-east seems to have no problem persuading the Government to develop any scheme, whether it be the


Channel tunnel, Stansted airport or rail links. The Government are persuaded that the development should go ahead in the region which is already the most prosperous and successful. That would be grossly unacceptable in the present circumstances.
The regional dimension is important. It is massively important that the nation should be brought together. The decision to develop a rail link to Stansted and enhance the capacity of that airport shows the Government's favour of Stansted airport at the expense of the rest of the airport system in Britain.
If Stansted is to develop, it will develop more quickly than any other airport in the history of the airports system. Were it to be developed, that would be directly at the expense of Manchester airport, but not just Manchester. Occasionally it is convenient for the Government to paint a picture showing that only Manchester would be affected. All the regional airports would be affected, such as Newcastle, Bristol and Birmingham and the Scottish airports, which want to develop, particularly in their charter traffic. Stansted would be looking for the charter traffic were it to move towards a throughput of 7 million or 8 million passengers each year. The charter traffic could make that possible. That traffic could come only if it were diverted from the other regional airports. The Government are saying to people from the regions that rather than having access to an airport system that serves the regions, they would have to travel via the south-east. They are doing that through their decision to develop Stansted.
The debate has touched on all the issues that affect the area round Manchester, but the fundamental issue that is at stake for Manchester and other areas is simply whether we are prepared, as a Parliament, to say to the Government, "We trust you to get ahead with the assessment of the scheme without reference to the House of Commons or the public." The Minister has made play of the fact that we already have a scheme, which has been discussed, not just for a year or two, but for many years, to link Manchester airport to the British Rail system. That scheme can be based not on provisional or estimated passenger throughputs, as is the case with Stansted, but on existing passenger traffic. We know the exact amount of traffic that Manchester now carries. Under that scheme, British Rail could put its estimates before the House of Commons and make that information available. We could easily come to our own assessments of the likelihood of the scheme's success or failure.
With Stansted, it is different. The scheme is much more fanciful. It depends greatly on projected traffic growth at Stansted, and that in turn depends greatly on Government decisions, such as to which airports they will allocate air traffic. Therefore, any decisions made by British Rail about Stansted are not decisions that it is capable of making independently of other actors in the drama. As British Rail, in its assessments, depends critically on decisions by the British Airports Authority and by the Government, it cannot seriously expect us to accept its own assessments of the viability of the Stansted scheme.
The minimum pre-condition, before Members of Parliament from the Manchester area can accept that the Bill should go forward, is that the calculation of the financing of Stansted and the passenger throughput that it involves is laid before us. Is the passenger throughput the 7 million or 8 million that the Government talk of? Is it

at a cost of £45 million or £50 million, as we are led to believe? Is it different? We do not know. Without that information, it would be unacceptable for the House to allow British Rail to go ahead, when that would be at the expense of every other scheme in every other part of the country. It would be a decision in favour of that one successful region at the expense of all the other regions.
For those reasons, I hope that the Bill will not be passed. The time may come when we can support it, but the pre-condition of support will be that we see the development of other schemes, such as the rail link to Manchester.

Mr. Christopher Murphy: This proposal to construct a new railway will result in encouragement of the use of Stansted, which I cannot condone, given my constituency concerns. The proposal to construct the new railway may also result in less finance being available to overcome commuting problems in mid-Hertfordshire, including the building of a new railway station in Welham Green where—I declare an interest—I have my constituency home, in North Mymms.
Although I recognise the value and importance of the introduction of one-man operated trains, the words of the old BR advertising campaign, "Let the train take the strain" are no longer appropriate; it appears that it is the commuter who now takes the strain.
I am sure that BR would be the first to recognise that it has not been tremendously successful in its level of service in recent months. Its attention might be better directed to overcoming that before embarking upon the new railway envisaged in the Bill.
When quoting the new advertising campaign, "We're getting there" my constituents might be forgiven for asking, "Where?" Is it to Stansted, which will increase the noise and disruption in neighbouring Hertfordshire? A more acceptable answer would be, "To London and home again." If the Bill were entitled the British Railways (Welwyn Hatfield Commuters) Bill, a far more positive response might have been forthcoming from me as a local Member of Parliament.
In our discussions tonight, no mention has been made of privatisation. The need for a railway to link London and Stansted might be an opportunity for privatisation. The Government have an excellent record on privatisation, especially in transport. I hope that they will consider privatisation for the Stansted link if there must be one.

Dr. John Marek (Wrexham): I wish to express my reservations about the Bill. I do not think that Stansted should be extended, and the fact that the proposal to do so has been passed by this House does not mean that I cannot still oppose it at every possible opportunity. British Rail is limited in its funds and so cannot construct railways here, there and everywhere. Indeed, BR often tears up tracks, with a consequent loss of service, which means fewer people using the railways.
I have been impressed with Conservative Members who have graphically described serious problems with BR operations on lines between Liverpool street and Cambridge. I always thought that the line between Euston, Crewe, Chester and the west coast main line was rather bad, but some of the stories tonight beat anything that I have ever heard or experienced.


The crucial problem is that unlimited money is not available. The Government control the amount of money that BR can spend. The question is whether BR should be allowed to spend its money on the line to Stansted—which I oppose—or whether it should be spent on some other project. The Minister asked my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) and myself whether we had any ideas for other projects that would mean a 7 per cent. return on capital invested, and said that we should write to British Rail with our suggestions. I do not look at economics in that way. I have a different view of how we should run the economy of this country, and it is not the compartmentalised view taken by the Minister.
If I had to guess about a line with a potential 7 per cent. return, I would suggest a connection to Heathrow. A fast train between Heathrow and the centre of London would mint money for BR day in and day out, and would provide a return of well over 7 per cent. Yet BR has not put forward any proposal for such a link. Indeed, it has not put forward a proposal to construct a link to Manchester.
We have been told that on a previous occasion the House has considered a Bill to allow BR to put forward proposals for a link to Manchester and to give it the power to construct that link. Nevertheless, nothing has happened. I fear that if the Bill is passed, and with money being so limited, it is likely that BR will favour the link to Stansted rather than the link to Manchester.
Of course, Manchester has always been done down as an airport. Yet people in the midlands, especially the west midlands, would find it as easy to go to Manchester airport as to go to London—

Mr. Patrick McNair-Wilson: rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.
Question put, That the Question be now put:—

The House divided: Ayes 66, Noes 37.

Division No. 84]
[9.59 pm


AYES


Alexander, Richard
Durant, Tony


Alton, David
Fallon, Michael


Baldry, Tony
Farr, Sir John


Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Fookes, Miss Janet


Bevan, David Gilroy
Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)


Biffen, Rt Hon John
Franks, Cecil


Bottomley, Peter
Fraser, Peter (Angus East)


Bruinvels, Peter
Galley, Roy


Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon A.
Garel-Jones, Tristan


Colvin, Michael
Gower, Sir Raymond


Cope, John
Greenway, Harry


Currie, Mrs Edwina
Gregory, Conal


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.
Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)


Dunn, Robert
Ground, Patrick





Holt, Richard
Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm


Hughes, Simon (Southwark)
Roe, Mrs Marion


Jones, Robert (Herts W)
Soames, Hon Nicholas


Kershaw, Sir Anthony
Speed, Keith


Key, Robert
Steel, Rt Hon David


Kirkwood, Archy
Stern, Michael


Knight, Greg (Derby N)
Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)


Lang, Ian
Stradling Thomas, Sir John


Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark
Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman


Lilley, Peter
Thompson, Donald (Calder V)


Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)
Thorne, Neil (Ilford S)


Marland, Paul
Wainwright, R.


Mather, Carol
Wakeham, Rt Hon John


Maude, Hon Francis
Wallace, James


Mayhew, Sir Patrick
Waller, Gary


Mellor, David
Wardle, C. (Bexhill)


Mitchell, David (Hants NW)
Yeo, Tim


Morris, M. (N'hampton S)



Neale, Gerrard
Tellers for the Ayes:


Neubert, Michael
Mr. Patrick McNair-Wilson and


Proctor, K. Harvey
Mr. Vivian Bendall.




NOES


Boyes, Roland
Madden, Max


Bright, Graham
Marek, Dr John


Brown, M. (Brigg &amp; Cl'thpes)
Marshall, David (Shettleston)


Brown, N. (N'c'tle-u-Tyne E)
Mason, Rt Hon Roy


Clay, Robert
Maxton, John


Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S)
Murphy, Christopher


Corbyn, Jeremy
Pike, Peter


Craigen, J. M.
Roberts, Allan (Bootle)


Davies, Ronald (Caerphilly)
Short, Ms Clare (Ladywood)


Dover, Den
Silvester, Fred


Eastham, Ken
Skinner, Dennis


Evans, John (St. Helens N)
Snape, Peter


Field, Frank (Birkenhead)
Thurnham, Peter


Godman, Dr Norman
Wells, Bowen (Hertford)


Golding, John
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Harvey, Robert
Winterton, Nicholas


Haselhurst, Alan



Hayes, J.
Tellers for the Noes:


Haynes, Frank
Mr. Tony Lloyd and


Holland, Stuart (Vauxhall)
Mr. Robert Litherland.


McKay, Allen (Penistone)

Whereupon MR. SPEAKER declared that the Question was not decided in the affirmative because it was not supported by the majority prescribed by Standing Order No. 32 (Majority for closure).

It being after Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Debate to be resumed on Wednesday.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That, at this day's sitting, the Agricultural Holdings Bill [Lords] may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour. —[Mr. Neubert.]

Bishops (Retirement) Measure

Question again proposed,
That the Bishops (Retirement) Measure, passed by the General Synod of the Church of England, be presented to Her Majesty for Her Royal Assent in the form in which the said Measure was laid before Parliament.

Mr. Greenway: As I was saying before the interruption, the second central question that I want to put to my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Sir W. van Straubenzee) relates to the possible age at which the Measure might be put with particular force in the direction of any bishop or archibishop. I had asked that the Measure be applied on the lenient side rather than with any severity and I had given my reason for that, pointing out that bishops can become ill physically and mentally, like anybody else, but they can also recover. I hope that when he replies my hon. Friend will be able to assure me that some allowance for that possible contingency will be made.
Will my hon. Friend say what will happen to the widows and young families of any bishop retired under the Measure? If one looks at what happens to the wife or widow of a clergyman, there is plenty of room for worry and dissatisfaction. Could a bishop be retired with his family into penury and without a home, as happens all too often with the widows of clergymen or clergy who fall by the wayside? I should be grateful for a response to that most important question.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: It is unfortunate that we have to resume the debate in the absence of the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), who made such a characteristic contribution at an earlier stage. However, we must do the best that we can without the assistance of his lights. The right hon. Gentleman regarded the established status of the Church of England as a self-evident absurdity, but he was characteristically kind enough to show that he arrived at that conclusion not by any process of reasoning, but as a matter of prejudice. He repeated several times that that was a consequence of the liberal, radical and free-thinking background from which he sprang.
It is no bad thing to recognise that there are institutions which are valuable and durable but which express massive and widespread prejudice and may not necessarily be accessible to demonstration, either from history or contemporary logic, of their necessity or value. Such I believe to be the establishment of the Church of England.
Apart from that larger matter raised by the right hon. Member for Chesterfield, a misunderstanding was implicit in his remarks, which perhaps the Second Commissioner may be able to clarify before the end of the debate. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to believe that when the retirement Measure was put into effect a Member of the House of Lords was removed by the process, whether by the decision of an archbishop or the decision of the Crown. I believe that to have been mistaken. I understand that a bishop who is retired under the Measure remains a bishop. The see that he occupied is vacated and it is the see which is represented by an automatic permanent or rotating seat in the House of Lords.
Historically, the Lords spiritual are present in the upper House not by virtue of their spiritual character or the

spiritualities with which they are endowed, but because they hold by barony the temporalities of their see of which they are seized as long as they remain a bishop. Consequently, the apprehension of the right hon. Member for Chesterfield that we are providing ourselves with the means of removing individuals from the service in another place is unfounded. The see will continue to be represented in the House of Lords either invariably or under law in rotation. I believe that it would be worthwhile for the Second Commissioner to clear up that matter if he comes to intervene.

Mr. Frank Field: The right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) has said that we must continue our debate without the considerable skills of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn). However, he is not making too bad a job of it. Before the right hon. Gentleman completes his contribution, will he comment on another aspect of my right hon. Friend's contribution? He mentioned that we were presented with the Church of England as being the first nationalised body in Britain. My right hon. Friend also called for disestablishment. Is that not calling for its privatisation by turning over the national church to the sect?

Mr. Powell: The hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) has certainly illustrated some of the quandaries into which those who argue from prejudice but purport to be guided by principle may from time to time fall. I hope that the right hon. Member for Chesterfield may have the leisure at some future date to take note of the hon. Gentleman's intervention.

Mr. Peter Bruinvels: I am pleased that we have an established Church, and the unique relationship between the Church and state is to be commended. Obviously, it is sometimes tempestuous, but at the best of times it is an excellent working relationship. That is why the Measure is to be welcomed.
I declare an interest as a member of the General Synod. I could not vote on the Measure when it came before the previous Synod in November 1983 and when it received final approval in July 1984, but if I had been a member then I would have supported it with the utmost vigour because it will enable diocesan and suffragan bishops to retire or resign with the minimum of fuss. We are asking for minimal requirements. It is correct that such a bishop can consult the archbishop of the same province and tender his resignaation to him in a written instrument.
I am worried about the age limit. It is strange that anyone can become a bishop at the age of 30 and can continue until he is 70, according to the Ecclesiastical Offices (Age Limit) Measure 1975. Why should all bishops remain in post until a certain age? Why cannot they retire earlier if they wish? Why should some elderly diocesan and suffragan bishops who are extremely good not be allowed to stay on for longer? Why must they retire at a set age?
I do not think that some of our young bishops are the very best. Why cannot they retire earlier? Indeed, they can. It is regrettable that we lose some of our best bishops in the prime of their life when their theological views are welcome to the state and encourage us. I hope that a special provision can be found so that they can continue to represent their see for a further period. Those with the


Christian faith and values are essential ingredients in the House of Lords, where there are 24 bishops and two archbishops. It is a loss to Parliament when they retire at retirement age.
I am worried about the six-month notice period. While I accept that some people may say that that is plenty of time to prepare the vacancy-in-see committee to advertise the bishopric, it takes a special person to become a bishop, and sometimes takes longer than six months to prepare for that appointment.
Similarly, while the vacancy-in-see committee looks after the affairs of a diocese, it is a serious matter when a suffragan bishop is not in situ. Obviously, when a bishop decides to retire, one hopes that there will be proper liaison with the archbishop and suffragan bishop to ensure that they can handle the trying business, and the additional responsibilities, including the spiritual help necessary.
Clause 1(1) enables a bishop to retire early. It may take a long time to find a suitable candidate. I wish that we were not discussing Crown appointments, and that a suitable list were hanging around from which to choose the right people—

Mr. Robert B. Jones: Christian people.

Mr. Bruinvels: Indeed—a list from which to choose Christian people.
Clause 3(1)(2) deals with illness and incapacity, which I hope is an isolated problem. I hope that few bishops appear either incapable or ill. However, I must deal with the judgment of the two senior diocesan bishops who are required to give advice, and to assist the archbishop in deeming whether a bishop is incapacitated by physical or mental disability, and unable to perform his episcopal duties. I am worried that the senior bishops coming from the same province as the bishop who is rumoured to be unwell will know that bishop extremely well. They might be overforgiving and say that he is all right when he is not, or the situation may be reversed. Perhaps consideration can be given to bringing senior diocesan bishops from the other province to make that judgment, together with the archbishop.
I notice that my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Sir W. van Straubenzee) will have additional responsibilities, as the cost of the medical examination is to be paid by the Church Commissioners' funds and naturally we shall be looking to that with interest.
It is sad when any bishop finds it necessary to retire. The responsibilities of a senior bishop are onerous. I look forward to seeing some bishops retire earlier than we would have expected and others—the excellent bishops who have given the best guidance to the Anglican community — being allowed to stay on past the maximum age of 70.

Mr. Simon Hughes: The hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Bruinvels) suggested that bishops reach the prime of their life at the age of 70, but if I remember my Bible correctly, it is normally at 70, or three score years and 10, that one is meant to pass on rather than be at one's best performing age.
This Measure was passed by the Synod with no opposition in any of the three houses, and I hope that this

House, although it has the constitutional duty of overseeing such Measures, will, as always, be mindful of the view taken by the Synod. I hope that we shall not interfere, other than in matters of substantial controversy, with what the Synod has done when it has considered the matter in detail. Although we are a long-stop under the constitution for what the Synod does, increasingly the Synod is responsible for, and able to make, its own decision. I hope that we shall allow that ever more impressive body to do just that.
My second point may have been touched on in the opening speech of the hon. Member for Wokingham (Sir W. van Straubenzee), who spoke on behalf of the Church Commissioners. If so, I apologise for not having heard what he said, but the debate came on slightly earlier than we thought it would. I am concerned that this matter has taken from July 1984 to February 1986 to come from the Synod to the House. It is not excusable that it takes nearly two years for legislation approved by the Synod to come here for its final debate and approval.
I should be grateful if the hon. Member for Wokingham would explain why that has happened, and for some assurances that methods will be found, through the members of the Ecclesiastical Committee and those who are working to expedite business on behalf of the Synod, to ensure that we do not have such a delay again. It is in nobody's interest that the House gives a final assent to a Measure two years after it has been debated in the General Synod. On occasion such matters may have substantially changed in such a long period, and it serves neither of us well if there are such substantial delays. I hope that they will not be repeated.

Mr. David Crouch: I apologise to those who proceeded me for the fact that I was not here to hear their speeches. I had another engagement which kept me out of the Chamber.
The right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) was wrong to say that requests to the House to consider Measures coming from the General Synod go through on the nod. That was pointed out to him by the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), and it must be emphasised. These Measures should not go through on the nod. They should be considered seriously by the House, and I am glad that they are not being considered at as late an hour of night, or as early in the morning, as they sometimes are. This is a reasonable hour for us to consider a Measure.
I am not altogether out of touch with the Church in my Canterbury constituency, and this Measure disturbs me a little. I do not intend to oppose it, but it was decided some years ago—I think in 1975—that bishops should retire at the age of 65. That seems to be a little early, although not quite so early as the retirement age of civil servants. They retire at 60. However, their contribution to public life does not end at 60. Permanent secretaries continue to make a great contribution to public life, based upon their long experience in the Civil Service.
The suggestion that bishops should have to retire at 65 worries me, but that is not the subject of this debate. We are debating whether they should be allowed to retire before the age of 65. This Measure makes provision for retirement on that basis. If, however, a bishop is thought to be unfit either in body or in mind before he reaches the age of 65, the Measure provides for his removal from his post. I do not dispute that this power should be provided,


but it is a formidable power to place in the hands of the Church. We ought to consider what would happen if hon. Members were subject to such a formidable power that they could be removed.

Mr. Peter Bruinvels: We are.

Mr. Crouch: Some are, but not my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Bruinvels). He maintains a position that allows nobody to get at him, I am sure. He is not quite all things to all men, but he is all things to the right men. I notice that the hon. Member for Birkenhead is nodding in agreement. We know that this is a political fact of life. We can be deposed if we are thought to be not fit politically for our appointment, but we cannot be deposed if we are thought to be unwell. We might be unwell for two or three months, or for six months or a year. Should we then be deposed? Certainly not. A Member of Parliament is not thrown out because people say, "He is not doing his job because physically he is a sick man." A Member of Parliament is not thrown out because somebody says, "He seems, because of his views, to be a sick man." How terrifying a prospect that would be.
If it is Parliament's responsibility to consider what is done in that other realm of the state, the Church, it is important for Parliament to pause and consider this formidable power of archbishops and bishops to remove somebody who they think might be unfit for the job.
I have perhaps over-exaggerated the implications of this small Measure, but it is the duty of the House of Commons sometimes to look behind the written word and ensure that it is not passing something that is wrong or over-emphasised and which we might later regret.
I rest my case in the hands of the Church. I am sure that it will take guidance about its decisions, not by coming to us, but by going to another place. I hope that it will do that. On this occasion, and at this hour, I am a little disturbed at the formidable power that it has given itself.

Mr. Robert Key: I warmly welcome the Measure and I shall support it. When my late father was consecrated Bishop of Sherborne in 1946 he was the youngest bishop in the Church of England. He spent a long time as bishop, and within a year of his consecration the diocesan bishop died and my father therefore had to assume his responsibilities for a year. If I have one regret about today's synodical government, it is in the time that it takes to put measures through the Synod.
In those days there was one suffragan bishop in the diocese whereas today there are two—who do less work because of the bureaucracy which has taken over. I am interested in this because, being a member of the Standing Committee on the Gas Bill, I am interested to note that the Church Commissioners have bought the freeholds of local gas and electricity showrooms. Perhaps that means that they know more about Sunday trading than we do.
This measure shows how interested the Synod and the Church Commissioners are in the well-being of the bishops who are often given responsibility and social positions which are impossible to maintain without the full support of the Church.
I regret the attacks sometimes made on diocesan bishops because they happen to live in houses which have been in the Church's ownership for many generations. Such attacks are unwarranted and unjustifiable.
Over the years I have watched with admiration the care in which the Church has for its bishops and for their widows. I am delighted that this is a further step forward.
When my father was diocesan bishop of Truro he fought long and hard to reduce the retirement age for bishops to 68. This measure will give a little more freedom and a little more reality. It will help to avoid some of the appalling conditions which our bishops have suffered over many years. In the days when my father first became a bishop his salary was paid out of diocesan fees. This led to many extraordinary ambiguities, not least of which was that we lived in six different houses in Salisbury close, always taking on the tail end leases of others when they were about to fall. Indeed, one of the houses designated to become the house of the Bishop of Sherborne is now occupied by my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath). However, I warmly welcome the measure and I commend it to the House.

Sir William van Straubenzee: By leave of the House, I shall reply briefly. I am obliged to the House for the care which properly is being taken about the Measure. It is a care which I am certain that the General Synod and the Church of England not only do not resent but of which they are appreciative.
I do not want to go into the wide matters raised by the right hon. Members for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) and for South Down (Mr. Powell) about the establishment of the Church. They are both far more learned than I. I was at school with the right hon. Member for Chesterfield who converted me at about 14½years to being a member of the Labour party. I matured earlier than he. On these matters, I accept what the right hon. Member for South Down said and believed to be the correct statement. This Measure does not create any history. There was a retirement Measure in 1951. In so far as Members of another place are "retired", it started in 1951. This Measure consolidates and perhaps gives greater rights to the person concerned. Enforced retirement has been mentioned in several speeches, but it is not mentioned in the Measure, and it is of much older provenance.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) spoke with his usual care and was anxious—I quite see why—about the steps that have to be taken. I hope that he will study clause 3 closely. The archibishop of the province has to be concerned, two senior diocesans have to be brought in, their concurrence has to be obtained and there is a medical inspection, the cost of which is properly not met by the diocesan concerned. The medical inspection might reveal possibilities of recovery. That is the point of such a careful inspection. My hon. Friend questioned the age of retirement.

Mr. Greenway: My point was that the process should not be started if there is any possibility of recovery, although I accept the value of the inspection as a fall back.

Sir William van Straubenzee: With any Measure or Bill, we have to consider the cold print. I hope and believe that, in application, if there is any hope whatever of recovery, the process will not be started. The House is


used to looking at the cold print of legislation. Neither Ministers nor anyone else can rely on good faith. We have to safeguard people's rights by cold print. Written into the Measure are rights which will be of enormous benefit, especially in the type of case that my hon. Friend has in mind, assuming that it ever arises. I believe that the safeguards will ensure that the matter is handled with the greatest sympathy and care.
The Measure does not deal with the age of retirement. My hon. Friend's study of these matters is far more erudite than mine, but when he gave the example of the great Archbishop Barbage, I thought that he gave one of the best examples of the need for a compulsory retirement age. As a boy, I sat enraptured by some of the magnificent sermons that he gave as Bishop of Winchester. Like many others, I hold in immense esteem his work for Church and state. The saddest section of the beautiful biography of Archbishop Barbage was the account of his chaplains having to go to him as an old man and tell him that he was past his work. He asked to be left alone so that he might ponder their advice. He then asked them back and, great and marvellous man that he was, thanked them for their courage in telling him. I want to tell my hon. Friend that he is a long way from retirement, but I am much closer to it. Sadly, one of my reasons for leaving the House—not sadly for everyone else but sadly for me—at the end of this Parliament, is that I have seen too many hon. Members of this honourable House stay on just a little too long. It is far better to go while people are still able, as in my case, to grate out the words "What a pity" about one, than "When is the old goat going to realise that he is past it?"

Mr. Greenway: I would point out to my hon. Friend that there was another biography of Dr. Cyril Barbage which did not take the kind of line that my hon. Friend has described. Indeed, it took the opposite line. Does my hon. Friend know about Bishop Winnington-Ingram who is still playing first-class hockey at the age of 72?

Sir William van Straubenzee: I have listened to Bishop Winnington-Ingram literally preaching with his hands. I doubt whether my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North will remember, but he preached with his hands and was the most expressive of preachers.
Obviously, there are exceptions to the general rule, but the general rule is important. My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) raised this point and I must emphasise that the general rule is not retirement at 65; that is when the pension is payable. The age is 70. I hope that that will assist my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury. In so far as one can measure these matters in human terms

on the number of years a man, and perhaps in future a woman, spends on the earth, 70 is about right. I know, as all hon. Members will know, that there are some hon. Members who have been dead since they took their seats. On the whole, these things must be measured carefully.
The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) asked a reasonable question about the delay. If the hon. Gentleman notices the rather special date of the re-examination of this matter, he will see that it was at the time when the previous bishop's appointment Measure was turned down by the House. That was a traumatic moment for the Church of England and the hon. Gentleman will know that, as he follows these matters very closely.
It was not unreasonable to look at the matter closely and to consider how it ought to be handled in relation to the next Measure which I hope to speak on shortly. That may not be a good answer to the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey, but we are both politicians and we therefore understand the realities of these matters.
I was grateful for the quick and personal comments from my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) as he speaks from experience of the care of bishop's widows. I trust and believe that such care is extended to other clergy. Only today I signed a letter to an Opposition Member in relation to the death of a young clergyman in the hon. Gentleman's diocese. I know that money and housing cannot bring back a young husband who was killed in an accident. However, in so far as those caring things can help, they have been provided in that case.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Bruinvels) made the interesting suggestion that the panel of bishops should come from another province. Is this not a case where men who have worked with somebody ought to play a role? Apart from anything else, it might be a safeguard against — though heaven forbid that this should happen—some kind of witch hunt. These men would know each other, would have worked together and would know each other's eccentricities. That is the reason for drawing the senior diocesans from the same province.
I trust that I have, in accordance with the traditions of the House, dealt with each speech, however inadequately and briefly. I sense that the mood of the House is, I hope, to give assent to the Measure and certainly that would be appreciated. I commend it to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Bishops (Retirement) Measure, passed by the General Synod of the Church of England, be presented to Her Majesty for Her Royal Assent in the form in which the said Measure was laid before Parliament.

Ecclesiastical Fees Measure

Sir William van Straubenzee (The Second Church Estates Commissioner, Representing Church Commissioners): I beg to move,
That the Ecclesiastical Fees Measure, passed by the General Synod of the Church of England, be presented to Her Majesty for Her Royal Assent in the form in which the said Measure was laid before Parliament.
This is a Measure that is designed to change the method by which draft orders that are connected with ecclesiastical fees are brought, first, before the General Synod and secondly, if necessary, before the House. They deal with peripheral fees with which we are all concerned in various ways. These are fees that may be charged in the parishes for weddings and burials, for example. Secondly, the orders relate to ecclesiastical judges and legal officers' fees and the fees charged by ecclesiastical courts. Thirdly, there are the legal officers' annual fees relating to the annual retainers that are paid to provincial and diocesan registrars.
During the latter half of the century we have, unfortunately, had to deal with inflation and it has been necessary from time to time to increase the fees by way of adjustment to take account of inflation. The General Synod has come to the conclusion that to do this by way of an affirmative order every time, when it is often not a matter of controversy, is not a very proper use of the House's time.
The Measure that is before the House proposes that the Standing Committee of the General Synod can determine that an affirmative resolution is not necessary. However, I want to make it abundantly clear that any one member of the General Synod can have that decision overturned if he or she wishes a debate to take place. If any one member wants that to happen, there has to be an affirmative resolution from the General Synod. Members of the General Synod will be given the right, in accordance with the standing orders of the Synod, which require 25 members to be in support, to propose amendments, a right which they do not have currently.
There was a change made as a result of discussion of the Ecclesiastical Committee, to which I express my appreciation and gratitude. As first presented, the Measure did not provide that there must be a negative procedure, as we know it in this place, and annulment by the House and by another place. The Ecclesiastical Committee doubted that that was proper. It was rightly careful, quite correctly in my respectful view, of the rights of Her Majesty's subjects. That is exactly what it is there for. After careful reconsideration, the negative procedure has been inserted. Hon. Members will find that in each of the appropriate clauses it is provided that the House has the right, if it so wishes, at any time to raise a matter by the negative procedure. There were two votes against in the House of Clergy, eight votes against in the House of Laity and no votes against in the Houses of Bishops, and the Ecclesiastical Committee of Parliament has found this procedure to be expedient.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: The Ecclesiastical Committee has served the House well in securing that both classes of order which can be made under this Measure will be subject to parliamentary

negative procedure. It is right and proper that we should not entirely relinquish parliamentary control over the content of these Measures. I think that it was in the original Measure that only one type of order was subject to negative procedure. It was right that the provision was extended to both, and that has resulted from the work of the Ecclesiastical Committee and the reconsideration that was given by the General Synod.
I hope that I am not straying too far when I draw the attention of the House to the fact that the General Synod may have come up with the solution to a problem which has vexed Procedure Committees and other Committees dealing with the procedures of the House. One of our difficulties in this place is our inability, when an order comes before us, to do other than approve or reject it. Even this House has found no means so far of being able, however desperately it might desire it, to discuss an amendment to an order. Perhaps a trail has been blazed for us by the General Synod by making it possible for an individual member to secure a debate—for an individual member of the Synod if supported by 25 others to secure that an amendment to an order can be debated. It is not often that, in our superior pride, we find ourselves looking to the Synod for guidance or enlightment in matters of our own procedure, but here the Synod may have hit upon something which is worthy of the attention of a procedural Committee of this House.

Mr. Simon Hughes: One of the three short points I wanted to make has been made by the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell). I hope that it will fall upon willing and listening ears because the procedural device that this Measure will bring to the Synod could with advantage be adopted here. The reason given for it by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Sir W. van Straubenzee) was that in some measure it had to do with the work load of the Synod. During the short time I spent in the last Synod after I was co-opted to it, as was the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), one of the things that became apparent to me was that the time of the Synod was severely pressed.
It is important, while retaining safeguards, as this does, to make sure that routine matters, though important, can be disposed of in the most effective and efficient way. Quite properly, the Synod has an enormous amount of work to do and if Parliament or the Church or the country expects it to do its job properly, we should allow it to have procedures that permit that to happen.
My last point is perhaps slightly more topical. I hope that the fees set out for the different types of activity, parochial and ecclesiastical, and legal officers' fees, will be examined. Sometimes different rates may be more appropriate in inner city areas, for example than elsewhere. We politicians sometimes come up against the problem of recruiting members at a standard rate in the more affluent shires and in the less affluent inner cities. I hope that in the debate on the commission's report, bearing in mind the welcome that it was given by the Synod when it met some weeks ago and remembering especially the task that is ahead of the Church Commissioners over funding for the projects and priorities set out in that report—especially the urban priority areas —some thought will be given to the way in which the fee is charged.
I hope that the fee charged and therefore the income received may be adjusted so that standard rates do not necessarily apply. Once a system and a structure have been organised and have gained assent, it may be possible to do things that, even in a small way, could bring about what the Archbishop's commission has proposed. I hope that the Measure will provide safeguards for steps of that sort as it will for the standard rate fees for the normal activities of the Church.

Sir William van Straubenzee: I should like to thank the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) and the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes). I am delighted to think that we at Church house may have found an answer to one of Parliament's problems. However, that is not a matter for me tonight. I shall draw to the attention of the appropriate authorities the interesting suggestion made by the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey. My immediate reaction, not rejecting his suggestion but thinking of it while I speak, is that I doubt whether we have the legal right and ability to make a difference in the fees as between one part of the country and another. As I say, that is my immediate reaction and the matter must be looked at. We are talking about the fees that may be charged in the parishes. I know, having chaired one of the commissions, that the clergy strongly wish that variable fees should, as far as possible, reflect the enormous pastoral opportunities of the clergy and the heavy expenses which fall upon families at a time of bereavement. Therefore, the fees are not uniform, imposed on a mathematical basis, but are geared to meet the pastoral duties of the Church. I hope that the House will accept the Measure.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Ecclesiastical Fees Measure, passed by the General Synod of the Church of England, be presented to Her Majesty for Her Royal Assent in the form in which the said Measure was laid before Parliament.

Agricultural Holdings Bill [Lords]

Order for Second Reading read.

The Solicitor-General (Sir Patrick Mayhew): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
This is a consolidation measure, which incorporates Law Commission recommendations. The law which it consolidates is that contained in the Agricultural Holdings Act 1948 and various other enactments passed since then. The Bill has been referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills which has reported upon it in terms with which the House is, no doubt, well familiar. I hope that, in the light of that report, the House will be able to proceed to approve the Bill without delay. The fact that we are able to do so is the result of the expertise and diligence of the members of the Joint Committee am sure that the House will wish to join me in once again expressing our thanks for their efforts.

Mr. Nicholas Brown: I thank the Solicitor-General for those remarks. Our approval of the Bill is not a formality — it is right that not just Government but Parliament should satisfy itself that what is intended is pure consolidation. I am so satisfied. I should like to endorse the Solicitor-General's remarks about the excellent job that the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills has done.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House— [Mr. Peter Lloyd.]

Bill immediately considered in Committee; reported, without amendment.

Motion made, and Question, That the Bill be now read the Third time, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 58 (Third Reading), and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed, without amendment.

Mr. Dennis Foskett

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Peter Lloyd.]

Mr. Vivian Bendall: This matter is worrying and causing considerable problems for some of my constituents. It concerns Dennis Foskett, who last November was committed for trial at the Old Bailey, having committed a double murder in May 1985.
In many respects this is a tragic case, as the two people killed were the man's doctor and the man's wife, who tried to intervene. The real and urgent problem that is causing my constituents and myself concern is that the court recommended that Mr. Foskett be put in an open hospital — Goodmayes hospital — which is an open mental hospital in my constituency. Obviously my constituents are concerned that this person, having committed a double murder, should be in a hospital which is generally open. It means that he has fairly easy access to the grounds of the hospital and to areas outside the grounds.
I accept that much of the problem relates to the Mental Health Act 1983, but I feel, as do many of my constituents, that a period of six months between May 1985 and November 1985, when he came to trial, is rather a short time in which to assess an individual who has committed two horrific crimes, one against his doctor and the other against his wife. Therefore, I understand the concern of my constituents. I have many letters written by my constituents concerning this matter.
One of the other concerns is that the grounds of the hospital and the gates to the grounds are open, as are the buildings of the hospital. Therefore, anybody can walk freely from the hospital building or the grounds in virtually any part of the day or night. It means that there is an element of risk to children at an adjacent primary school. Can anyone with any certainty and with any guarantee say sincerely, even with the best professional experience and advice available, that an individual who has committed such crimes may not on another occasion take it upon himself to find a way out of the mental institution, which is completely open, and commit a further crime? That is the essence of the problem which faces my constituents. I have some sympathy with them.
Others have also expressed concern about the placing of Mr. Foskett in this mental hospital. The Confederation of Health Service employees has lodged complaints with the local hospital management committee. I have also received verbal complaints from members of staff at the hospital.
I have been in correspondence with the Department of Health and Social Security and the Home Office. I am a little perturbed at the time that it has taken to receive certain answers. I originally wrote to the DHSS on 30 December and received an acknowledgement on 9 January. I then heard nothing from the DHSS or the Home Office, the DHSS having informed me that the matter was the responsibility of the Home Office. I wrote to the Home Office again on 20 January, and did not receive a reply until 5 February. This matter has caused a great deal of local concern. It has been well reported in local newspapers and on Essex Radio. There has been much local concern.
I shall give an example to the House of how easy it is to gain access to Goodmayes hospital. A reporter of a national Sunday newspaper was able to go to Goodmayes hospital quite openly. He went to the reception desk and asked which ward Dennis Foskett was in. He was directed to the ward concerned, and when he arrived at the ward he asked a doctor or nurse where Mr. Foskett was. He was pointed out to him at the end of the ward. The reporter then took a photograph and left the building. I do not condone such an attitude or such irresponsibility by a national newspaper, but it emphasises how easy it is to enter some of these mental hospitals and, therefore, how easy it would be for a patient to get out of such a hospital.
I understand the problems of my hon. Friend the Minister with regard to the 1983 Act, but I challenge that Act. I do not doubt that sooner or later someone will walk out of a free hospital and commit another such offence. Society generally wants to avoid that, and it is right that society is concerned about this issue.
I firmly believe that a period of six months is not long enough to assess someone who has committed such a crime. That person should be kept in an establishment for rather longer, so that a fuller assessment can be made. Perhaps, after a period of time, if the person is seen to be of stable nature, it might be appropriate to consider moving him to a place with more freedom.
I understand the concern felt by my constituents. I thank the House for the opportunity to bring the matter before it tonight. I hope that my hon. Friend will give some assurance that such cases in open hospitals will be closely monitored, and also that he receives regular reports from the local hospital management committee or other responsible bodies about the progress of individuals put into those institutions for the sort of offence committed by Mr. Foskett.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Mellor): My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Bendall) has spoken eloquently of his constituents' anxieties in this matter. Let me say at once that I think it perfectly understandable that this matter should have given rise to genuine concern. I want to set out the facts of the case as I understand them, and hope that there will be some reassurance for my hon. Friend.
Prior to the tragic events of 17 May 1985, Dennis Foskett had lived peacefully with his wife for more than 20 years. Statements before the court describe him and his wife as a devoted couple. He had no convictions but did have a history of depression which started after a bout of influenza in 1970. The depression recurred periodically over the intervening years, and his most recent illness began in April 1985, following another attack of influenza. It was so severe that he was forced to give up work because he suffered from anxiety to such an extent that he spontaneously broke down in tears.
A few days before the tragedy he consulted his family doctor, Dr. Glickman. She prescribed some drugs, which he thought made him worse, and on Friday 17 May Mrs. Foskett asked Dr. Glickman to visit her husband at home because his condition had deteriorated. Dr. Glickman agreed to visit him on her way home after she finished surgery.
At 7.12 pm the same evening neighbours saw Mr. Foskett run out of his front door shouting for help. He had


a hammer in his hand which he put on a dustbin lid and he kept repeating that he had killed his wife. The police and an ambulance were called and several passers by went to his assistance. He returned to the house to fetch a glass of water and some tablets which he immediately took. Mrs. Foskett was found to be already dead and Dr. Glickman died shortly afterwards in hospital, the cause of death in both cases being a fractured skull. Mr. Foskett was also taken to hospital for a stomach washout. He made a second suicide attempt three days later, which was also unsuccessful.
When Mr. Foskett appeared at the Central Criminal Court on 22 November 1985—six months later—he was convicted of two offences of manslaughter, both by reason of diminished responsibility. The court had before it three medical reports—one from Dr. Paul Bowden in his capacity as consultant forensic psychiatrist to Her Majesty's prison, Brixton, where Mr. Foskett had been held on remand, one from Dr. Patrick Galloway, consultant forensic psychiatrist at St. George's hospital and one from Dr. Hirst, consultant psychiatrist at Goodmayes hospital. All three doctors agreed that Mr. Foskett was suffering from a severe depressive illness at the time of the offence and that he continued to need treatment for his depression. However, they also agreed that in the six months since his offence, during which time he had received appropriate treatment for his condition, there had been a marked improvement in his mental state. In their view, so long as Mr. Foskett continued to receive the appropriate treatment for his illness, he was unlikely to pose a significant danger to other people and did not require conditions of security. It was their unanimous recommendation that treatment could safety be administered at Goodmayes hospital.
The court accepted the psychiatrists' recommendations, making a hospital order under section 37 of the Mental Health Act 1983 placing Mr. Foskett in Goodmayes hospital, together with a restriction order under section 41 of the Act. The latter order ensures that Mr. Foskett cannot be set at liberty without the consent of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary or a decision by a mental health review tribunal.

Mr. Bendall: Will my hon. Friend say where Mr. Foskett received his treatment while he was in custody before trial?

Mr. Mellor: He was treated in Brixton prison while on remand. All that followed flowed from the judge's order, which directed that Mr. Foskett be placed at a specific hospital. It was not a special hospital order that provided for any form of security. The evidence before the judge was that Mr. Foskett did not require any security. I stress that, because many of the powers that might have flowed from a special hospital order do not arise in this case.
As my hon. Friend realises, I cannot comment on the court's decision. it is fundamental that the Government do not seek to interfere in the decisions of the judiciary or to question the exercise of its discretion. Parliament provides the courts with powers to deal appropriately with all types of offender, but it is for the court to decide in an individual case what the appropriate sentence should be. I can say, however, that judges at the Central Criminal Court are very experienced in dealing with cases like this one.
It is, of course, essential that courts should have full information on which to base their decisions, and that was

so in this case. The court had the three reports from psychiatrists, which I have mentioned, which were able to take account of the period Mr. Foskett had spent on remand, not just the few horrifying moments in which the dreadful killings took place. It also had a full description of the facilities and accommodation available at Goodmayes hospital, so that it knew precisely in what circumstances Mr. Foskett would be held and how he would be treated. If the court had been dissatisfied or worried, it could have called for further reports or made a different disposal, but it did not do so. I am sure the court thought very carefully about these matters and took the decision which seemed proper on the evidence before it.
It is normal practice for my Department, when receiving a court order, to call for copies of any medical reports which may have been made and to confirm that the placement is an appropriate one. If there seems to be any reason to think that the placement is inappropriate—for example, if we are not sure that it is sufficiently secure —we consult the responsible medical officer, but —I stress this point, as it is relevant to my hon. Friend's anxiety—the Home Secretary has no power in such circumstances to direct that a particular patient should be transferred. Accordingly, if the patient's responsible medical officer And the hospital managers are satisfied that the placement is appropriate, there is no action which the Home Secretary—or the Secretary of State for Social Services—can take to effect that patient's transfer to a different hospital. That is the rub of my hon. Friend's anxiety.
My hon. Friend has been punctilious in carrying out his obligations on behalf of his constituents, and he wrote a letter expressing his worry. That letter reached the Home Office before Goodmayes had sent details of Mr. Foskett's reception. I immediately arranged for Dr. Knapman, Mr. Foskett's responsible medical officer, to be consulted urgently on the suitability of Mr. Foskett's placement at Goodmayes hospital. My noble Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security similarly arranged for my hon. Friend's concern to be drawn to the attention of the health authority.
I am sorry that as a result of those steps being taken there was a longer delay in replying to my hon. Friend's letter than I should have wished. I hope he understands that inquiries needed to be made. I regret that that time elapsed. I sought to explain the position in my letter of 5 February, and further on 17 February, when I was able to tell my hon. Friend that Dr. Knapman has confirmed that in his opinion Mr. Foskett remains free of any symptoms of mental disorder and poses no risk of any sort to anyone at present and that there is no case for transferring him from Goodmayes hospital. That being the responsible medical officer's view, there is nothing that I can do about the matter. It is for the responsible medical officer to make his decision.
That is the case at the moment, but I can certainly give my hon. Friend the assurance which he seeks, which is that I shall ensure that Mr. Foskett's case is kept under close scrutiny, and if there is any evidence of any deterioration in his mental state or general behaviour I can assure my hon. Friend that I shall not hesitate to take up with the responsible medical officer once again the question of Mr. Foskett's placement at Goodmayes hospital.
Although, as I have explained, the Home Secretary has no power to order the transfer of a restricted patient from one hospital to another against the advice of the


responsible medical officer, such a patient cannot be given permission to leave the hospital, even for a short period, without my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary's consent. I can assure my hon. Friend that my right hon. Friend's consent would not be given unless he was

satisfied that the patient could re-enter the community without danger to the public. I very much hope that my hon. Friend and his constituents will have been reassured by what I have been able to tell him this evening.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty minutes past Eleven o' clock.